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MEDITATIONS 


BY 


LEROY A. HOLLENBECK 

if 


FIRST EDITION 

Cloth Bound, $1.00 



Copyright 1911 
By 

LEROY A. HOLLENBECK 










To my fellow members of the House of 
Representatives of the Eighteenth General 
Assembly of the State of Colorado, and to 
the memory of my fellow members of the 
House of Representatives of the Twelfth 
General Assembly, and particularly of the 
Twelfth, Col. B. F. Montgomery, the grizzled 
war horse and talented and aggressive leader 
of a turbulent and vigorous following; and 
J. Max Clark, the cool, conservative, dis¬ 
criminating reasoner, debater and author, 
this book of Meditations is humbly and re¬ 
spectfully inscribed. 

BY THE AUTHOR. 


C 0.A28O573 


PREFACE. 


This little volume of “Meditations” is a 
result of my thoughts in this line at various 
times when I have not been busy with other 
matters; and some of them were written as 
editorials in the “Salida Mail”. And while 
making no special pretensions to literary 
merit, yet these productions in a way repre¬ 
sent the occasional trend of my thoughts 
when not otherwise occupied, and they are 
put into book form to preserve, as a matter 
of record, because the mental processes are 
the most important part of any man’s 
history. It is my first effort in the book line, 
and I know the productions may be easily 
criticised, but if anyone shall be benefitted 
by reading any of this book then I shall feel 
amply rewarded for the time I have spent in 
its production. 

LEROY A. HOLLENBECK. 

Salida, Colorado, January 5th, A. D. 1911. 



II>relut>e 


ITf all passions, beslres anb motives 
Iknown to tbe human heart 
Bre placeb there for gcob— 

Zo protect or to perpetuate 
^Either tbe Inblvlbual or tbe species, 

Cben percbance there Is no sin: 

Bnb tbe economy of nature Is full 
Mltbout such blbeous anb btstorteb tbougbts. 
J8ut tbe negative—calleb sin, wrong anb error, 
Bs blstlngulsbeb from tbe positive, or right— 
ITs an Ibea—right or wrong 
Cbat enbeavors to break 
Cbe establlsbeb orber—anb makes 
B conflict between tbe Ibeas of mlnb 
Hn Its Infinite workings 

ffor life, liberty anb tbe pursuit of happiness— 
3For tbe mlnb strives for goob, 

Ittot as some otber mlnb sees—but as Itself sees; 

TCHblcb striving Is governeb by a perverteb slgbt, 

Bn unebucateb personality, Incorrect statements, 

©r befectlve jubgment, consequent 

TUpon tbe state of bealtb, conbltlon or bereblty. 

Bnb that vice anb error are such 

;©y comparison wltb truth anb virtue; 

premising right anb wrong, 

tfor which punitive measures can not avail, 

JBut only corrective metbobs, 

Cbo' sometimes brastlc. 

Can probuce a harmony In accorb 
“OTtb tbe big best concepts 
©f a comprehensive mlnb. 











MEDITATIONS. 


SUGGESTION. 


Listen not for “Gabe” or his trumpet, be¬ 
cause that is a suggestion that hastens an 
event before the proper time. Mental sug¬ 
gestion is a great power, and is akin to hyp¬ 
notism. It will make a man or kill him. It 
is the parent of an idea. A suggestion 
within, or a suggestion without, or both to¬ 
gether, produce an idea. Sometimes the idea 
is irresistible. A man asks you to sign a 
note. You have sworn that you will not sign 
any notes. You have signed an agreement 
with a mutual friend not to sign any notes. 
Solon has said that “Suretyship is the pre¬ 
cursor of ruin”, and you believe, aye, you 
know that Solon spoke the truth. You have 
experimented, and would be most happy to 
be able to prove that Solon was a noted 
single-handed liar, but money talks, and 
when you reached down into your jeans and 
paid the note that you became surety to, you 
knew that Solon was no liar, and hence you 
swore, and swore that you would never sign 
another note. But along comes a friend whom 
you never before suspected would ask you for 
any favors, and says he will certainly pay in 
thirty days, if you will sign with him, and 
that you will never hear of it again, and he 
looks you in the eye so dignified and in a 




8 


Meditations. 


matter of fact way informs you that it is 
merely a formality, and that it will never 
cause you any trouble; and notwithstanding 
the fact that you swore not to sign, and that 
you feel like swearing again, your hand 
moves with the pen to the note in spite of 
you and you place your autograph on the 
surety line and you are “stuck” again. The 
mental suggestion enforced the idea, and 
you were in a measure hypnotized. 

There is no telling what an idea will do 
with a man. But ideas come from sugges¬ 
tions. Suggest happy ideas to a man and he 
is happy: Suggest melancholy thoughts and 
he becomes blue: Suggest pure ideas, and the 
tendency is to become pure. 

The results, however, are always modi¬ 
fied by counter suggestions. Life is a 
suggestion, and the course of life is a multi¬ 
plicity of them. The suggestions make the 
man. The will power, if brought into play, 
can in a certain measure control the sugges¬ 
tions. Optimistic suggestions produce hap¬ 
piness; pessimistic suggestions produce fear, 
decay and death. The former promotes 
health, happiness and long life, while the 
latter invites disease, sadness and death. 
Ponce de Leon explored the world for the 
fountain of perpetual youth. He made a 
mistake, for that fountain is within man 
himself if it be anywhere. Suggestion is the 
gateway to the good and the bad. Let us, 
then, watch suggestions from whatever 


Young Man. 


9 


source, and drive away the bad, the sad, and 
the pessimistic; and invite the good, the 
bright and the optimistic. And above all 
things, let us see that our school books con¬ 
tain no suggestions contrary to a sound, 
cheerful and happy future, and that a public 
opinion be created to compel the mentally 
unhealthful to be excluded from our news¬ 
papers, and then by evolution we will rapidly 
drift into the grand, beautiful and successful 
era in the civilization that awaits us. 


YOUNG MAN. 


Would you become wealthy? Some peo¬ 
ple say when you tell them a truth, “Oh 
that’s a platitude, sir, a mere commonplace 
saying”. They forget that some common¬ 
places are the richest jewels from the human 
mind. If you would become wealthy, pay 
your debts. The man who pays his debts 
must possess some other good qualities. He 
must be sober, industrious and economical 
and must think correctly so as not to mis¬ 
calculate about his obligations. He must 
stay with his job and must not spend his 
money before he gets it. Pay as you go, is a 
good maxim. What will all of this do for 
you? It will give you a business credit, and 
without a good business credit, young man, 
you can never become wealthy. Business 
credit is better than cash. When you have 




10 


Meditations. 


spent your cash, you are all in, as they say; 
but if you have a good business credit, when 
you have spent your cash, then your char¬ 
acter will bring you a large amount of money 
besides, to carry on your enterprises. If you 
are growing you will need cash and credit 
both, and you will be an indefatigable 
worker too. Eternal industry and vigilance 
are the price of property. Some people ad¬ 
vise you to spend all of your money and have 
a good time. That is the advice of a man 
who is in pursuit of vanity. He thinks he 
is pursuing happiness, which happiness 
eludes him like a will-o’-the-wisp, and he dis¬ 
sipates his life in a round of empty vanities, 
that in old age he is ashamed to even men¬ 
tion to solid sensible folks, and his life is a 
blank from the standpoint of having been a 
benefit and a blessing to the world in which 
he lived. Credit is a powerful weapon for 
ambition, a solace and satisfaction in every¬ 
day life, and a fortress of protection in dis¬ 
tress. You can abuse a dog and he will still 
be your friend. Not so with credit, for if you 
abuse it you have lost it, and very great is 
that loss. Credit is the key of power and 
opulence, so young man pay your debts and 
pay them promptly, and maintain a good 
credit and you will receive the gracious ap¬ 
probation of yourself and of the community 
in which you live. 


Integrity. 


11 


INTEGRITY. 


Integrity is that characteristic of a man 
that makes him immune from immoral and 
corrupting influences; and it signifies a con¬ 
scious mental strength that causes a man to 
bid defiance to petty and unworthy motives. 
It is well for any man to take a careful in¬ 
ventory of his integrity, for that is the key 
that opens the gate to his financial success. 
It also gives him social standing, and if he 
be a failure as a financier he often lacks the 
qualities that make him a power and a 
factor in the world of affairs and business. 
A genius may or may not be a money maker, 
and a money maker may have poor integrity, 
but integrity is the foundation stone to fi¬ 
nancial and other successes. Combinations 
of circumstances may keep a man down for a 
considerable time; but if he have health and 
integrity he will soon rise and create cir¬ 
cumstances to suit his will and pleasure. 
There are many qualities that make a sound 
and successful business man; but the quality 
that towers above all the rest and controls 
them is integrity. If a man gives his word, 
that word should be a sacred goal to be ac¬ 
complished at all hazards. A man is 
judged by his words and his acts. If his acts 
fulfill his words, then you have found a man 
who always stands high in any community. 
If a man weigh his words lightly, then lie 



12 


Meditations. 


cares less whether his obligations be ful¬ 
filled, and he is weighed and found wanting 
in the business world. He has no credit, and 
when a man has lost his credit, he has lost 
his power as effectually as did Samson when 
shorn of his locks by Delilah. Look around 
you and see the men who regard their obli¬ 
gations lightly. They are short-sightedly 
oblivious to the essential stepping stone to 
success which is called integrity. They are 
frivolous, and lack the energy and sense to 
analyze their own mental and moral short¬ 
comings for the purpose of self comprehen¬ 
sion and the vigorous adjustment of them¬ 
selves to the harmonious principles of suc¬ 
cess. There are many of them. Some are 
our neighbors, and we look at them with 
compassion and hope they will do better. To 
those poor deluded people we would say that 
promptness in meeting obligations gives you 
credit; credit gives you power, and power 
gives you standing in the community and 
makes you respected and honored. There is 
every great inducement to keep your word, 
for a man’s word is the grand foundation 
rock upon which he builds his character and 
success, and without that rock he becomes as 
chaff and drifts with the wind of uncer¬ 
tainty. Then, lay the foundation rock of 
character, and possess that passport which 
is a badge of success among all people of all 
nations,—'“His word is as good as his bond.” 


Ideas and a Free Press. 


13 


IDEAS AND A FREE PRESS. 


An idea is the product of a suggestion. A 
suggestion may come from the senses or it 
may come from intuition, conception, imag¬ 
ination or inspiration. A suggestion is either 
subjective or objective, and ideas are num¬ 
bered by infinity, and are of all grades and 
characters as to both objects and intensity. 
There is no telling what an idea will do with 
a man, or a nation. Reasons are deduced 
from ideas. Judgments follow reasons. 
These ideas, reasons and judgments are al¬ 
ways truth to the mind that produces them. 
Sometimes they may be reconsidered and 
changed, and then as changed they become 
true again to that mind. No man intention¬ 
ally produces falsehoods for a rule of his 
own conduct. The idea, to the man, is true. 
Ideas separate political parties, disrupt na¬ 
tions, and carry ravages, destruction and 
distress to the human family, and they also 
carry peace and good will. 

Ideas are both constructive and destruc¬ 
tive. A destructive idea may not be con¬ 
ceived in malice, but may have an ultimate 
object of construction. A destructive idea 
may be an heroic remedy. Bonaparte was the 
physical demonstration of destructive ideas, 
and yet he was a great constructionist. He 
would better the human family, but it must 
be done according to his own ideas, and the 



14 


Meditations. 


ideas of a genius are certainly the best to 
himself. Some ideas are made effective by 
physical force, and others by diplomacy and 
tact. Bonaparte meant force; Jefferson, di¬ 
plomacy; and the results of both were good. 

You can kill a man, a community or a 
nation, but you cannot kill an idea. An idea 
is a good deal like a corporation. It never 
dies. It exists merely as a consciousness, 
but the results are tremendous. An idea 
makes and breaks men, corporations and na¬ 
tions. 

The pen is an instrument of an idea. A 
free press and free speech are the vehicles of 
ideas. Hence a free press is indispensable to 
the progress of civilization. A free press for 
the most part has been permitted for more 
than two hundred years. During that time 
a man was occasionally burned at the stake 
because he had an idea. Sometimes the idea 
was called witchcraft and sometimes blas¬ 
phemy. But the idea won, and it finally pro¬ 
cured a safe vehicle for transportation—a 
free speech. 

The constitution provides for a free 
press. It may be attacked by a fit of igno¬ 
rant hysterics, but it is marching on. There 
is no downfall to a country that has ideas 
and a free press to convey them. The money 
powers had an idea and tried to corner the 
money of the world. They cornered it, too, 
but it didn’t stay cornered. Why? Because 
they didn’t corner ideas. The scientists and 


Is Crime Increasing? 


15 


inventors discovered machinery to mine and 
treat low grade ores very cheaply. The gold 
output was tremendously increased. Gold is 
money. The consequence was that there was 
a great inflation of the currency or money 
beyond the control of legislation. This was 
a natural law, a scientific demonstration, 
and the power of concentrated ideas. Cap 
italists can run a corner on the corn market, 
wheat market, hog market, money market, 
or any other commodity market, but they 
cannot corner ideas, and that fact is the 
great safety valve of human progress, and as 
civilization advances, ideas multiply in va¬ 
riety, in number and in intensity, and as 
ideas always seek the truth as an ultimate, 
it follows that civilization is entering a 
grand era on the vehicles of a free press and 
a free speech. 


IS CRIME INCREASING? 


It is quite common to note the oft ex¬ 
pressed opinion of a number of people, that 
crime is increasing. The mild but extreme 
remark seldom brings a reply, other than a 
concurrence. The opinion however is gener¬ 
ally ill considered, and is frequently a mere 
echo from somebody else. If crime were in¬ 
creasing it would be at the terrible cost of 
an arrest of evolution and civilization would 
involve upon a backward track. Upon the 




16 


Meditations. 


frontier of a country crime was always ram¬ 
pant, but judging from history the frontier 
became tempered with mercy, while formerly 
it was synonymous with ferocity. He who 
believes that crime is increasing, fails to 
note the great increase of population of the 
world, and does not realize that crime can 
increase, and still decrease in ratio to a 
larger population. He fails to comprehend 
that since the general diffusion of intelli¬ 
gence, telegraphs, telephones, and news¬ 
papers, we have a list of the crimes of the 
world every morning before breakfast, that 
otherwise we would never hear of. It is not 
noticed that war is becoming infrequent, 
and that this great crime of the world is fast 
becoming impossible; and as with war, so 
with crimes of a lesser magnitude, for a con¬ 
dition of war is the incipiency of much other 
crime. Much of the so-called crime is com¬ 
mitted by young men—many of them mere 
boys. And most of this scarecrow is not 
crime at all—merely the indiscretions of 
youth. Younger boys are indiscreet—a con¬ 
dition antedating mental development—and 
their parents spank them, which discipline, 
if neglected, may produce a spoiled boy, and 
the State has to do the spanking later. The 
boy’s judgment is not yet developed. He 
can’t help that. He is subject to the law of 
development. The perception comes first, 
then the other faculties, and last, the judg¬ 
ment. It is no use to find fault with nature 


Is Grime Increasing? 


17 


and say it should be reversed, and that the 
judgment should be developed first. It is as 
it is. A young man will make a mistake in 
business that an older man would avoid; and 
the same is true of morals and ethics. These 
may not be serious errors in the young man, 
but experience—lessons to make a man 
larger. Sometimes a severe chastisement or 
an embarrassing predicament is necessary to 
discipline a man. It depends upon the 
mental fibre of the boy or man and his pre¬ 
vious education. If he be beyond redemp¬ 
tion he has to be taken care of permanently. 
It is not all crime that is called crime. Per¬ 
haps the public ideal is wrong—it sometimes 
is—or perhaps the so-called criminal has a 
poor judgment and bad breeding and will 
insult you when he desires to please you. 
He can’t help it. Natural endowments of 
mind, and conditions, are the facts we meet 
when we meet a man. Lack of training is 
the most dangerous condition of the animal 
we call man, and even that condition is 
usually reduced to reason when it meets with 
the rugged experience of the world; and the 
person that experience does not make better 
is usually badly unbalanced. Right and 
wrong are relative terms, and measured by 
the standard of morals of every individual 
and every nation; and to do right, is to know 
the right, and to avoid wrong is to know the 
wrong,—that is if the man has the proper 
self control, and if he have not, then he is 


18 


Meditations. 


more or less irresponsible, and needs an anti¬ 
dote, a lesson, or a treatment. 


A MAN’S DEVIL IS ENVY. 


What is envy? It is said to be pain and 
mortification at another’s superiority or suc¬ 
cess. It has no reasonable excuse, except 
mental weakness; and that is a reasonable 
excuse. For if a man be weak, the weakness 
is a truth and he cannot help it. Perhaps he 
will outgrow it. He will if he has the right 
starting point—a healthy brain. If he has 
not that foundation it is his misfortune 
rather than his fault. He means well, 
but does not understand the truth. 
Truth is everything. Sometimes it is posi¬ 
tive and sometimes negative, but it is all 
truth, and a mental inferiority as well as a 
mental superiority is truth. Age sometimes 
cures envy, because age discloses philoso¬ 
phical truth—when age has broadened the 
individual as it should—otherwise the result 
is disappointing. 

Envy is a boomerang. It returns to 
wound the man who cherishes it. That is 
experience. It takes a little time for it to 
return. That is why age helps out some¬ 
times. The reason is improved. The man 
becomes broader. He begins to realize that 
envy was his principal stumbling block. 
Mind friction develops mind when the fric- 




A Man’s Devil is Envy. 19 

tion is based upon ambition, emulation, or a 
desire to know for the love of knowing. But 
when mind friction is based upon envy it 
dwarfs the envious mind. Instead of the 
mind enlarging it contracts. There is no 
standstill. An envious man either outgrows 
his envy and sheds it in the light of eternal 
truth, or the envy enwraps him and he 
stands at the side of the moving procession 
an unphilosophical cynic that sees no good 
except when it emanates from his own 
warped and incompetent brain. 

Why should any man be envious? No 
large man is envious. Envy is the exclusive 
field of small men. There is a glorious fu¬ 
ture for anyone who hopefully tries. The 
song says “The world is wide’ 7 . There is 
room for everybody. If you have an ac¬ 
quaintance who is superior in anything, that 
is a cause for gladness instead of envy. He 
is a help and a satisfaction to you and it 
ought to be a pleasure for you to know him 
as an acquaintance or a friend. This method 
on your part is a sign of size in you. It 
means that there is a good, respectable 
standing room set aside for you, and that in 
some respects at least, you are his equal. 
Great men appear by pairs or groups. Who 
would have dared to have accused Lincoln 
of being envious of Douglas, or Douglas of 
Lincoln? There was no room in their brains 
for such a mean sentiment. Had either en¬ 
tertained such an emotion he would im- 


20 


Meditations. 


mediately have sunk out of sight, because 
envy would have been a greater load than he 
could carry. A great man is one who strives 
to reach the goal to accomplish the object of 
his purpose, and, although he may be disap¬ 
pointed by another coming in ahead, so far 
as money or honors are concerned, yet in 
such a case he has the satisfaction of know¬ 
ing that in many respects, and particularly 
in his own experience, he has received as 
much benefit as his competitor. 

There are men who are called knockers. 
When they don’t fill the demands of progress 
they knock on the man who does. Their 
chief stock in trade is envy. There is nobody 
but what sometime has been tempted by 
envy. That is man’s devil. It promises 
everything and gives nothing but humili¬ 
ation and distress. 

You should, then, rejoice in every man’s 
prosperity and success, even though that 
success may mean preference over you, be¬ 
cause that course enlarges you, and makes 
you of greater breadth and caliber. 

You may dissent from principles that a 
man declares and the course he pursues, but 
that is not a question of envy, for envy would 
step into the other man’s success without the 
energy and thought that gives him a com¬ 
mand of recognition. 


Vim in Editorials. 


21 


VIM IN EDITORIALS. 


Somebody lias suggested that it is a good 
idea to have vim in editorials. That, how¬ 
ever, depends on what a man understands by 
vim. If he means savage and vicious re¬ 
marks and the calling of hard names like 
“thumpers”, “bouncers”, “fighters”, and the 
like; if he indicates the man who can say 
smart things and witty nonsense that benefits 
nobody and injures many, including the 
editor; if he refers to the man who prides in 
poses and egotism, whose chief desire is to 
attract the attention of an applauding 
crowd that knows no difference between a 
cheap badinage and meritorious sense, then 
excuse us for desiring to avoid vim in edi¬ 
torials. But vim is not cheap and senseless 
chatter. A raving maniac shows great en¬ 
ergy. All such exhibitions excite either pity 
or disgust in a man who is rational and level 
headed. Real vim is thought—cool, careful, 
analytical, profound thought. Anything 
short of that is not vim, but slush. 

The most powerful force in the world is a 
normal human mind. The reason is, that the 
mind evolves ideas. Some minds have a 
dearth of ideas. Such minds sometimes aim 
to divert attention from their scarcity of 
ideas by producing noise. Noise is a poor 
substitute for ideas. The former moves the 
wind, while the latter moves the world. An 



22 


Meditations. 


idea seems to be a modest unpretentions 
something. Its potency is frequently not 
recognized by a majority of people until it 
gains physical force. Some people could 
look at Morse’s telegraph idea, or Whitney’s 
cotton gin idea, or Fulton’s steamboat idea, 
and say, “Oh pshaw! Give me something 
that has vim in it. Give me a man that can 
chew up somebody; that can make the earth 
tremble and quake because of his voice and 
big words.” He hasn’t the discriminative in¬ 
tellect to recognize the silent forces of na¬ 
ture. The greatest diplomat of the seven¬ 
teenth century was William the Third. He 
was as speechless as General Grant or 
George Washington. The forces that make a 
blade of grass or an umbrageous forest are 
quiet, but deep, profound and mighty. That 
is vim. 

Then do not mistake a logical statement 
for tameness and want of vim. If a consid 
erable part of the community is in favor of 
weak vaporings called sensationalism, then 
they are out of touch with the beautiful and 
profound equities of nature, and must be 
brought back to a realizing sense that their 
minds are too superficial to understand the 
real significance of the word vim, or force. 


Optimism. 


23 


OPTIMISM. 


Optimism is to see the bright side of life. 
Pessimism is to see the dark side, and is 
principally useful to make the bright side 
appear brighter by contrast. Therefore pes¬ 
simism has its uses; but there are plenty of 
people who are pessimistic, and there will 
always be enough pessimism for practical 
purposes. Therefore let us cultivate optim¬ 
ism for that promotes life, happiness and 
prosperity. Let optimism permeate our en¬ 
tire existence, moral, religious, political and 
in business, because too much contact with 
a chronic pessimist makes us morose, sullen 
and blue, and causes us to ask such foolish 
questions as “Is life worth living?” and 
“What does it all amount to after all?” Op¬ 
timism is a plant or germ, as it were, that 
grows from a pure mind, pure thoughts and 
purposes, with a banishment of a large part 
of the purely personal selfishness. It is 
easier to cultivate good than evil, cheerful¬ 
ness than melancholy, and the rewards 
thereof are sunny minds, cheerful counten¬ 
ances, and benevolent intentions toward 
everybody and everything in nature. 



24 


Meditations. 


A GOOD CITIZEN. 


A good citizen: Who is lie? He is a 
person of infinite variety. If there were not 
an infinite variety of good citizenship, there 
would be a lack of individuality and of men¬ 
tality, and humanity would immediately as¬ 
sume a retrograde movement. 

The human species is on the up grade, 
and it is the natural desire for man to do 
right, and this natural desire makes the ma¬ 
jority of mankind good citizens of a state, 
and a blessing to society. But there are ex¬ 
ceptions— persons who think meanness, 
speak vulgarity, and do rascality. To do and 
to speak mean and vulgar things is the out¬ 
ward proof of the inward meanness of 
thought. Sometimes the inward thought and 
natural standing is inherited. Sometimes it 
is a cultivation, and sometimes it partakes 
of both. No person is free from evil thought. 
A certain amount of so-called evil thought is 
necessary to all people for the proper devel¬ 
opment of the individual. But improper or 
continued surrender to evil thought is decay. 
“A burnt child fears the fire”, because ex¬ 
perience developed the memory and judg¬ 
ment. Good citizens vary in degrees of 
judgment. But one should not do things or 
say words to annoy his neighbor; and if he 
desires not to say or to do things to annoy 
them, he must not think to annoy them. 



Socialism. 


25 


Think no evil,—that is, to the extent of put¬ 
ting evil into practice, and if you think no 
evil, you will say and do no evil things, and 
you will then become a good citizen and a 
prominent man in the country in which you 
live. 


SOCIALISM. 


What is a socialist? He is a person who 
advocates a better and more perfect form of 
social find political government. Well, any¬ 
body is in favor of that, unless he be an 
absolute monarchist or anarchist. Therefore 
all people not despots or anarchists are 
socialists. Socialism is a question of de¬ 
gree only. A republican is a social¬ 
ist, so is a democrat or a populist or 
a member of any other political party. Every 
man has a different brand of socialism. 
There are usually one or more principles 
upon which several socialists believe in com¬ 
mon. Socialists who believe in a high tariff 
are called republicans, and those who believe 
in a low tariff are labelled democrats. So¬ 
cialists who believe in the government own¬ 
ership of the public utilities, such as rail¬ 
roads and telegraphs, are sometimes called 
populists, and a party that advocates a more 
general public ownership of property is 
usually termed socialistic. If their schemes 
realized would make a worse government in 




26 


Meditations. 


stead of a better one, then they would not be 
socialists, but visionaries. 

Sometimes a statesman is spoken of as a 
hundred years ahead of his time. That 
sounds nice. It seems to flatter a man, but 
the more you sound it, and analyze it, the 
less it flatters. It detracts. Anybody can 
dream. A day dream may be an unbridled 
imagination. A man who dreamed of a fly¬ 
ing machine five hundred years ago was at 
least five hundred years ahead of his time. 
His dream didn’t help Magna Charta. That 
charter and the American constitution are 
the two greatest governmental documents in 
the English speaking nations. They were 
intensely practical. They were made to suit 
the exigency of the times. And although of 
lasting worth, they were not made to suit an 
imaginative condition of idealism to be at¬ 
tained in the future, but were prepared for 
the then present. No thinking individuals 
of a party agree with the other thinkers of 
the party except in part. That is true of the 
socialists. Each one has a different brand of 
socialism. If they were to get control they 
would immediately split into three or four 
different political parties. Why? Because 
they do not agree, and each man’s socialism, 
to him, would be the true and proper brand. 
The world does not progress by leaps and 
bounds. It progresses by points and pegs. 
It never was revolutionized and its systems 
changed at once, and it never will be. That 


Socialism. 


27 


is where the socialists are butting against a 
stone wall of fact. Instead of helping a 
powerful party to do right on points and 
issues, they try to create a new party ma¬ 
chine to take the place of an established 
party machine, all of which party machines 
are made out of the same material—men. 
They get the reputation of being cranks,—an 
odium is cast upon them and they become 
stumbling blocks to progress, and retard the 
very objects that they are trying to accom¬ 
plish. They are asking too much—the im¬ 
possible feat of perfecting a world social 
system at a stroke. They forget that there 
is no perfection, unless it be a plan, and all 
rational plans are to make more perfect the 
imperfect. Imperfection is the field of op¬ 
portunity. If there were perfection there 
would be no opportunity, no desire nor ob 
ject in life, and all would be death. There¬ 
fore, the socialist who dreams of perfection 
at all, merely dreams. And if he dreams of 
perfection soon, he has a nightmare. He is 
entertaining a sweepstakes, something that 
will wipe out the old and bring in the new, 
the perfect, the ideal. After it were brought 
in, it would still be imperfect, perhaps worse 
than the condition that was wiped out. The 
world is progressing, however, and a point 
is made occasionally. The legislature 
doesn’t score all of the points. It is usually 
the rear guard of the procession. Wireless 
telegraphy and the cotton-gin are points. 


28 


Meditations. 


They are the mighty demonstrations of an 
idea in the mind of a Marconi, or a Whitney. 
The points come singly,—almost impercept¬ 
ibly, and are an aggravation to a theorist 
who wants to reform the world by a legis¬ 
lative fiat. He is intolerant of these little 
things. But little things make large events, 
and history; and when they become im¬ 
portant, the legislature comes along with its 
wisdom and legalizes a custom that has be¬ 
come established, because of the mental pro¬ 
cesses that have been changing world condi¬ 
tions. The statute is an after thought, and 
the legislature is the necessary caudal ex¬ 
tremity of civilized progression. We have 
industrial strikes, boycotts and lockouts. 
These troubles are not to be remedied by a 
general readjustment of social conditions. 
Such a readjustment is runreasonable, il¬ 
logical and unattainable. 

These conditions are questions now to be 
solved, and not dreams to be reckoned with 
in the distant future. They must be settled 
by citizens of the country who grasp the 
issues of the present day instead of dreaming 
of an ideal future. A man has no compre¬ 
hensive right to dream a hundred years 
ahead. His duty is to get down to practical 
conditions of the present time, and the log¬ 
ical results of history; and instead of voting 
for an impossible condition of the present, 
based upon a hoped-for future, he should 


Spcialism. 


29 


vote on an actual issue of the present, and 
let the future take care of itself. 

A few men cannot make an issue. An 
issue is a question that a majority party, or 
a large minority party forces to the front. 
There are hundreds of political questions 
that will be issues in the future. Hundreds 
of them have not even been thought of yet. 
They will be issues. They are not now issues, 
because this is not the psychological moment. 
Voting for an imaginary or real future issue 
does not help the people in a present issue. 
To be a hundred years ahead of time implies 
a prophetic vision that can foretell all of the 
possibilities of the human mind in that 
coming hundred years. These are reasons 
why it is not statesmanship to be a hundred 
years ahead of time. A man may think he 
is a hundred years ahead, but he isn’t. A 
great statesman is a man who is thoroughly 
and practically in touch with the issues of 
his own time. And the socialists and all 
practical men of any country should be 
reasonable and help out on the real present 
issues that are agitating the people, and not 
waste their energy and block progress by 
voting for an ideal that may or may not at¬ 
tain the importance of an issue a hundred 
years hence. 


30 


Meditations. 


PERFECTION IS UNDESIRABLE. 


Perfection is a word generally used in a 
crude and imperfect sense. It is in greatest 
demand by people who do not know what 
they are talking about. Men have theories— 
ideals. To them their theories and ideals 
may seem perfect. Those ideals come from 
an imperfect mind, in an imperfect body, 
concerning an imperfect reality. What is 
perfection and where is it? Nothing in na¬ 
ture is perfect unless it be a plan or prin¬ 
ciple. And that plan is the development of 
an imperfect reality to a higher plane, and 
nearer perfection than it was before, because 
the idea of perfection is infinite, and like 
space there is no ending. 

The deeper, higher and broader a man be¬ 
comes, the greater is his opportunity to ex¬ 
pand mentally, morally and pl^sically. The 
attainment of possibilities, instead of lessen¬ 
ing the field, makes it more extensive. That 
is because of imperfections. Imperfection is 
the field of opportunity. There is something 
to learn. That is what makes life worth liv¬ 
ing. That causes progress. If all w r ere per¬ 
fection there would be nothing further to 
learn or to do; because with perfection there 
would be nothing to attain—to accomplish. 
There would be no object to work for, no in¬ 
centive to spur to further action and all 
would be stagnation, decay or death! 



Perfection is Undesirable. 31 

All nature is imperfect. This imperfec¬ 
tion is infinity. Perfection then is the im¬ 
possible and undesirable, unless it be in 
spiritual matters. As to spiritual affairs 
perfection may or may not be a fact; that 
involves opinions and opinions are guesses. 
Let that question take care of itself. Imper¬ 
fection being a field of opportunity gives us 
a chance to grow—to attain a higher plane 
in the infinity of progress. 

The opportunity applies to all of the 
walks of life. We are entering the door of 
invention, science, religion and politics. The 
ideal socialist is merely dreaming. If his 
dream of perfection ever be realized, perfec¬ 
tion will still be as far ahead of him as his 
dream is ahead of the present. Perfection 
is a sort of Jack-o-lantern, or Will-o-the-wisp 
that ever eludes and leads on and on. It 
sometimes acts as a spur, and some people 
are led on to attain an ideal with confidence, 
hoping to receive the grateful applause of 
humanity. When the object is the applause 
of the multitude, it suggests the abnormal 
development of an egotist spurred on by ig¬ 
norance. Such a man usually believes in 
perfect and complete logic, perfect morals, 
perfect physique or perfect government: The 
last would be perfect anarchy, perfect social¬ 
ism, perfect democracy or perfect despotism. 
To him an imperfect law would mean a trick 
of lawyers in the legislature to injure the 
people. A wise man is one who seeks not 


32 


Meditations. 


perfection as an objective, but seeks the 
more perfect as a matter of the present bet¬ 
terment of himself. The applause of the 
multitude is doubtful. Self approbation of 
well doing is satisfaction. If a man start 
on a journey afoot, he progresses by steps. 
It is imperative that he cover the distance 
by succeeding steps. That is the practical. 
If he walks awhile and imagines that he will 
dispense with the succeeding steps and take 
only the last few steps of the journey, skip¬ 
ping over several miles between, without 
passing over it by steps, then he is dreaming 
—he has abandoned the laws of progress and 
has fallen into a pit. He is a mere vision¬ 
ary. He has become of no further practical 
use because he has forsaken the laws of 
progress—that the world moves by steps and 
not by bounds. 

If perfection were attainable, there might 
be a rational excuse for a visionary to make 
a short line to the goal. That is a field of 
unprofitable speculation, because perfection 
is impossible and undesirable. Imperfec¬ 
tion is the condition of all things, therefore 
the condition of imperfection is wise, benev¬ 
olent and good. That makes it possible for 
all things to grow and develop. That is a 
state of progression of unending duration, 
making a perpetual creation of past, present 
and future. Human imperfections are some¬ 
times distressing, but they have their lessons 
that are taught to man by contrast and com- 


Great Events. 


33 


parison, the result of which is growth and 
the general betterment of society. 

Anybody who fails to make the world 
wiser, purer and better has a deficiency of 
understanding that might be called abnor¬ 
mal imperfection which instead of being a 
progressive imperfection is a retrogressive 
one, and makes of a man what is usually 
termed a confirmed criminal. The desirable 
imperfect is the golden mean between the 
ideal perfect and the reprehensible imper¬ 
fect. All of this proves that the world is 
governed by conservatism, by middle courses, 
by compromises. That is a balancing of the 
claims of both extremes, and that is true 
whether the question be of politics, religion 
or morals, and the supreme test of a question 
is, is it reasonable and practical? 


GREAT EVENTS . 


Appearances are sometimes deceiving. 
Some people are wrapped in political ques¬ 
tions, when really those matters are of small 
importance. They want to go to Congress, 
which is all right, but there are other 
things than Congress that are more or less 
important. Some men shape events while 
others are shaped by events. The latter are 
necessary elements to be used by those who 
are making history. 




34 


Meditations. 


Every year Congress lines up pro or con 
on some important governmental issue. It 
is a great political question, perhaps, be¬ 
cause it is a greater commercial question. 
They sometimes divide regardless of party 
lines. Strange it is, that sound men are fre¬ 
quently found opposing each other. All of 
which is because of each man’s view point. 
This at least maintains the equilibrium and 
prevents an explosion of the fly wheel. But 
a large part of the time of a legislator is con¬ 
sumed by matters that really are not of much 
importance, although he may think they are. 
Sometimes they become important matters 
when it was supposed that they were not 
serious. 

Ideas produce the real great events of his¬ 
tory. Imperceptible ideas, conceived by men 
in profound silence; away from society and 
the world; away from publicity and informa¬ 
tion; in the recesses of the hermitage; far 
from the maddening, brawling crowd,—these 
are the ideas that are the beginnings of great 
events. They have more kinetic energy than 
all the armies of the world. Some of these 
ideas become great questions, mighty forces, 
and potent factors in the development and 
the weal and woe of the human family. 

The Merrimac and Monitor changed the 
navies of the world. They represented two 
ideas, later to be assimilated into one unit. 
The nations line up periodically on political 
questions. There is a fight pro and con for 


Great Events. 


35 


success. It has its redeeming features. It 
is social and animating. Everybody is free 
to take his choice. He wins or loses. So 
does everybody else. Marconi paid no atten¬ 
tion. Like Napoleon he was wrapt in the 
solitude of his own originality. He had a 
wireless telegraph project, and succeeded. 
It came from an idea evolved from the fertile 
brain of Marconi. That was a great event. 
Nobody voted on that question. It was an 
event of vast importance, and beyond the ken 
or jurisdiction of Congress, except as a mat¬ 
ter of later regulation. A Congressman isn’t a 
foot high in comparison with a great thinker. 
Elections don’t make brains. Sometimes 
they recognize brains, and sometimes not. 
The man who may think that progress is at 
a standstill because his political ideas are 
not being carried out, had better revise him¬ 
self. The bright, progressive, profound, ac¬ 
tive and persistent ideas of brilliant and in¬ 
spiring geniuses are going to keep us busy 
keeping track of the progress of the world; 
and Congress and legislatures, and even cap¬ 
italists, will have little to say about it, and 
will be attached to the rear, like the supply 
train of an army. 


36 


Meditations. 


SLUGGING CONTESTS. 


Many communities are afflicted, occasion¬ 
ally, with the slugging match microbe. The 
slugging contest is an entertainment to 
some, while to others it excites feelings of 
disapproval and disgust. The athletes call 
it manly exercise. In some ways it is on a 
lower level than a bull fight—the bull 
doesn’t fight for money, while the athlete 
does. The bull’s fight is for principle—self 
defense—while the athlete fights for mercen¬ 
ary gain. He wants to make money without 
work. He gambles upon the morbid and per¬ 
verted imagination of the unreasoning, care¬ 
less and brutal inclinations of a part of the 
community. Many pretty good people go to 
these slugging matches. They sometimes ex¬ 
cuse their consciences with the thought that 
it is only a boxing contest. Somebody gets 
knocked out however, and it lessens the 
standard of the conscience of the looker on. 
Conscience is the guardian of good morals, 
and is a matter of education. There is no 
standstill. A man grows either better or 
worse. If he cultivates the down grade he 
is approaching physical, mental and moral 
ruin. To know this is a comprehension of 
ultimates—a realization of approaching dis¬ 
aster; or of dignity, power and success. 
Many people do not consider, or if they do 
consider, they set aside conscientious checks 



Slugging Contests. 


37 


in order to satisfy the present desires of ex¬ 
citement. The objective world has its pleas¬ 
ures, but not by itself, because the outer 
world is appreciated or hated according to 
the capacity of the inward self. A pure 
mind in a healthy body can get more creative 
enjoyment out of ordinary things than the 
abnormal tastes can get in a lifetime out of 
slugging matches and bull fights. 

There are neither morals nor aesthetics 
in a prize fight. Exercise? Yes, there is ex¬ 
ercise. You can get better exercise pound¬ 
ing a drill or hoeing corn. Five dollars a 
ticket to see a slugging match! A fool and 
his money soon parted! Barnum said the 
American people like to be humbugged. 

Purely commercially speaking, morals 
aside, there is one smart man in a slugging 
match. That is the manager who is highly 
paid. He saw ultimates in the dollars of the 
daddies, and coined money out of a defect of 
human understanding. He is entitled to it. 
He is a good judge of human nature and is a 
survival of the fittest. He may not be a 
scholar. Scholars sometimes don’t count 
much. It is thinkers who count. While the 
scholar may be thinking about Latin roots, 
some thinkers are studying human credulity. 
Civilization is like unto a mountainous coun¬ 
try, with a topography of mountains, valleys 
and tablelands; hence slugging matches will 
have to be tolerated until there be developed 
u tableland of social conditions above the 


38 


Meditations. 


miasmatic swamps of degraded tastes for 
athletic sports which are mixed with a 
coarse brutality that would be more appro¬ 
priate for the cannibals of the Fiji Islands. 


DON’T TRY TO GET EVEN. 


There are people whose main ambition in 
life is to get even with somebody. That is a 
waste of energy and time at the expense of 
sense. It is a matter of revenge. They say 
that revenge is sweet. It is a bitter sweet 
however. Like produces like. The person 
who is the object of the revenge also resolves 
to get even. That cultivates feuds, malice 
and hate. A man’s mind is his capital. He 
can bank on his mind. He will check out 
what he deposits. If his mind is in a good 
humor, he will be met with kindness, while 
if his mind be malicious he will meet hate, 
and if he has lost a quarrel and wants to find 
it again, he will foment a fight. The human 
animal is accommodating. “Seek and ye 
shall find.” That is true and you will find 
what you seek, whether it be trouble or a 
sunny and happy disposition. This is a 
beautiful and happy world in which to live. 
Nature has done its part. There is no good 
reason why a sound mind should not be 
happy. Happiness is attained by industry 
and a desire coupled with an effort, to better 
and to purify the inner self. 




Don’t Try to Get Even. 


39 


Other people are little responsible for 
your happiness or misery. Happiness is sub¬ 
jective, not objective. It can be cultivated 
and improved the same as a plant. A desire 
to get even is based upon a false pride and a 
vain notion of your own importance. No¬ 
body realizes that importance except your¬ 
self. Meet the world with a smile and a 
pleasant word and you then begin to be im¬ 
portant and a necessity to other people. 
“Let not the sun go down upon your wrath”, 
said Solomon. That was several thousand 
years ago. He stated a moral truth, perhaps 
a long time ahead of his time. That was 
plain, moral, common sense, and you who 
are saturated with a desire to get even had 
better step aside from the passing crowd and 
cross examine yourself and ask yourself a 
few hard questions as to your cultivation 
within, of the undesirable quality of malice 
and hate, and resolve that henceforth you 
will agree with Solomon and will not allow 
your wrath to burn after the setting sun. 


40 


Meditations. 


FANATICISM. 


Fanaticism is a word used to cast reflec¬ 
tion upon an over zealous agitator. It is 
usually applied as a term of opprobrium, and 
refers to a person who is extravagant in 
opinions, and who is affected by excessive 
enthusiasm. It is most frequently used in 
reference to religionists, but it is as true in 
politics, science and business as it is in re¬ 
ligion. You sometimes sneer at a fanatic, 
and you don’t always know why. Sometimes 
it is the fear of being sneered at yourself 
that makes you sneer. A sneer is one of the 
most powerful weapons in the world. At 
one time everybody in the United States 
Senate was afraid of the sneer of Roscoe 
Conkling. It was a powerful sneer and 
would crush a man. That sneer however, 
would have been powerless before a fanatic. 
There were no fanatics in the Senate unless 
Conkling himself was one. A fanatic is a 
man who couples his reasons with an uncom¬ 
promising aggressiveness. Some people have 
reasons for the faith that is in them, but do 
not express them. If you hear of the rea¬ 
sons in spite of the sneer, then you have a 
man of nerve. Some people call it courage. 
Courage, however, suggests its opposite, cow¬ 
ardice. Therefore the word courage is a sug¬ 
gestion of opprobrium as well as commenda¬ 
tion. It is a poor word to use. Nerve is 



Fanaticism. 


41 


better. Nerve rises and falls like the tides, 
only not so regularly. When the tide is down 
the intelligence is lively, and when the tide 
is up, the intelligence is sluggish. That is, 
an active intelligence sometimes weakens the 
nerve. The intelligence calculates, reasons; 
while a sluggish intelligence weighs neither 
conditions nor consequences. An ignoramus 
will fight, while a wise man will walk away. 
The former considers not the results, while 
the latter weighs effects. The former is 
courageous or nervy; while the latter is just 
sensible. The former loses, and the latter 
wins. The fanatic has both reason and 
nerve. His reason may be faulty, and draw 
largely on the imagination, but it is true to 
him, and this being true and also essential to 
the betterment of the human family he has 
the nerve to face opprobrious epithets in his 
efforts to enforce his views upon the world. 
Many of the greatest movers of events in his¬ 
tory were fanatics. Many times they were 
wrong, but they did the world a great service 
because they moved something. A fanatic 
has little fear of public opinion. He is pur¬ 
suing an ideal and is afraid it will get away 
from him. He hasn’t stopped to weigh the 
idea. Perhaps he hasn’t the scales. But 
other minds do the weighing for him and it 
is of no importance to the fanatic. He sets 
people to thinking. If they find the idea 
will bear analysis, then the world is made 
better. If they find that the idea will 


42 


Meditations. 


not bear an analytical test, still then the 
world is better. They have had a chance to 
think, and have thought. They have weighed 
the idea by the powerful scales of logic, and 
they have found truth or error, and in find¬ 
ing error they have found truth. People 
sometimes drop into a sleep of lethargy and 
indolence. The fanatic stirs them up. They 
are benefited by being stirred up and that is 
a good service the fanatic has done to the 
world. It makes little difference whether 
the fanatic be right or wrong. He is cer¬ 
tainly right in the stirring process. He 
won’t die of the dry rot, and he won’t allow 
his neighbors to die that way either. He be¬ 
lieves in action, mental exercise. That makes 
the other fellow swear about fanatics some¬ 
times, but the fanatic has done him a service. 
He has prolonged his life, for development 
banishes disease, and has made life more en 
durable. Everything has its uses, even a fa¬ 
natic. 


Habits arifl False Notions. 


48 


HABITS AND FALSE NOTIONS. 


Bad habits and false notions usually go 
together: Good habits and correct notions 
are also companions. The former comprises 
an easy drifting course that requires little 
thought, or energy, or nerve, or gumption; 
while the latter requires thought, energy, de¬ 
cision and executive ability. In the business 
world the former represents the man who is 
a checker on a checker board; while the other 
is the man who moves the checkers. There 
is a class of people who have decided that the 
way to live is to have a good time, to spend 
all of their wages or salary as they go along, 
to insure their lives to protect their families 
when they die, and to depend upon a benevo¬ 
lent society for care if they should become 
sick. That is a combination of a bad habit 
and a false notion of life. It is a weakness 
that is distressing to a person of large com¬ 
prehension and penetrating gaze. A person 
of such mind and habit is free from a writ of 
execution. He has no property. He isn’t 
willing to spend the energy and to practice 
the economy necessary to accumulate prop¬ 
erty. If he has property he must steal it, or 
else it is an accident of circumstances. Such 
a man is the embodiment of a retrograde in 
morality. He is more selfish than the prop¬ 
erty selfish, and has no progressive ability, 
and his vision is clouded by a sort of miscon- 



44 


Meditations. 


ception of the real progressive objects of life. 
A man of that kind usually has no bank ac¬ 
count or a home. Frequently other people 
pay his debts—that is, if he has been able to 
hypnotize somebody into the idea of signing 
his notes. The world asks him for no advice 
because his advice is worth nothing. He is 
devoid of purpose and is drifting like a dere¬ 
lict ship on the ocean. But he thinks he is 
important. Frivolity and foolishness look 
like wisdom to him. If the world has any 
demands for progress of any kind, to make 
upon anybody, such a man is taken into con¬ 
sideration only as a commodity—like a horse 
or a cow. There is little use to talk to an 
old man in his folly. Sometimes it is futile 
to talk to a young man in his conceit. But 
the young man is the coming man, or the 
coming nonentity. Young man, beware of 
your time and money. You must practice 
system and economy of both time and money 
or you will never amount to anything. That 
means self denial, vigor and ruggedness of 
character. The time to begin is now. Save 
at least half of your earnings. Deny your¬ 
self the society of frivolous people. Do not 
allow them to “blow you in”. Set them the 
example of right thinking and right acting, 
and the decision of character to carry it out. 

There is a chance for you to reform. 
Reformation is the comprehension between 
right and wrong, accompanied by a decisive 
action of the will power to do the right. It 


Bachelors and Maids. 


45 


Will develop your self consciousness of your 
own increasing power. It will make a man 
of you instead of a mere thing. You can’t 
afford to be classified as a thing. Be an all 
round sensible man. Nobody can be more 
than that. You cannot afford to be anything 
less, because a man is the most important 
material demonstration that moves on the 
earth—that is if he is the right sort, and if 
he is the wrong sort he appears to be merely 
a thing. 


BACHELORS AND MAIDS. 


This refers to what is usually termed old 
bachelors and old maids. There isn’t much 
excuse for a man being an old bachelor. 
The old maids can’t help themselves. The 
bachelors can. There is a kind of unwritten 
law that all proposals of marriage shall 
come from the man. There isn’t any sense 
in that custom. If possible, it ought to be 
neutralized by statute. Some men are really 
too bashful and awkward to make any pro¬ 
posals of marriage. They, usually, are men 
of good standing, and of some ability, but 
inexplicably bashful and modest. They could 
marry a woman of good standing if they had 
a little more nerve. They are afraid of their 
own voices, and a negative answer would 
break them up in business. The girl marries 
some scrub, and Mr. Bashful says, “Oh 




46 


Meditations. 


pshaw! If I had known she wanted to marry 
bad enough to accept that scrub, I’d have 
asked her myself.” Well, there is another 
class of bachelors: That is the bold con¬ 
ceited set—the element that has no morals, 
nor wants any; that prefer to live a free and 
easy life of license; that are not willing to 
assume their share of the burdens of the 
world; that want to have all the pleasure 
themselves; and want other persons to as¬ 
sume the real burdens of life. They see noth¬ 
ing in life except excesses, immorality and 
rascality. Many of these bachelors are in 
the penitentiary. There should be a few 
more in the same place. 

There are many more women than men, 
and if a man is going to debauch, instead of 
lifting up existing conditions, it is better to 
increase the disparity. A bachelor over 
twenty-five years of age ought to be taxed, 
and the longer he remains single the greater 
should be the tax. If he is determined to 
lead a sort of butterfly life, and is not will¬ 
ing to assume the ordinary duties of society, 
he should be brought to his senses. The fel¬ 
low who thinks that there isn’t a girl in the 
community good enough for him is an egotist 
who isn’t good enough for most any girl in 
the community, and if he would marry one 
of them, the probability is that the girl 
would make a pretty fair man of him in time. 

Leap year doesn’t help the situation. It 
rather emphasizes the custom that a woman 


The Pursuit of Money. 47 

in making a proposal is out of place, and if 
the whole custom of proposals were relegated 
to an oblivious, historical reminiscence, we 
would have fewer old bachelors and old 
maids, and a better morality and common 
sense. This would produce a fair and rea¬ 
sonable equality between the sexes, and so¬ 
ciety should take active steps to inculcate 
this doctrine into the minds of the rising 
generation, in order to remove a serious 
stumbling block to the equality of mind and 
the reasonable freedom of society, thus re¬ 
leasing the community from a false notion 
that never was a benefit but on the contrary 
was a detriment, planted so deep in human 
prejudices that it lingers as an actual men¬ 
ace to society a century after it should have 
disappeared forever. 


THE PURSUIT OF MONEY. 


It is said that “The love of money is the 
root of all evil,” and there is a constant crit¬ 
icism on the mad rush for dollars. Who is 
right, the man who is after the dollar, or the 
man who sits and looks on and says it is a 
sin to “git a plenty while you’re gittin’ ” ? 
The pursuit of the dollar is enterprising. 
The pursuer may not be a poet, a scientist 
or an idealist, but one thing is sure, he is not 
dying of the dry rot, nor sitting on a dry 
goods box trying to solve deep and intricate 




48 


Meditations. 


problems in psychology, sociology or meta¬ 
physics. If he is making money on the 
square, he is a benefit to himself and to the 
state. Really it is a pleasure to make money 
on the square—to work, to develop interest 
and habits of industry—that banishes the 
lazy microbe and makes life worth living. It 
also minimizes vice and immorality, for the 
time is occupied with the pleasure of devel¬ 
opment and acquisition, and the man lias 
little time to admit impure thoughts. 

When a man makes money on a swindling 
deal it is practically a confession that he is 
not competent to supply his wants in a fair 
way in the battle of life; so an unfair and 
swindling way of making money stamps the 
man as a mental and moral imbecile. It is 
often said, “Oh, anybody can make money if 
he has money,” when, as a matter of fact, 
most people lose money when they have 
it. It takes a smart man of sound judg¬ 
ment to make money whether he has money 
or not, and this theory that anybody can 
make money with money is misleading and 
incorrect. The love of money produces good 
morals. The love of vice and frivolity aided 
by money produces bad morals and degrada¬ 
tion; but a man in pursuit of money and 
wealth has his mind occupied and has no dis¬ 
position to waste his time and strength in 
base pleasures that serve only to defeat his 
financial purposes. A money maker is al¬ 
ways a busy man, and a busy man is usually 


Spending Money. 


49 


moral, so the love of money, and to make 
money is really in the path of progress to a 
higher moral plane, that places the money 
maker among the strongest and best charac¬ 
ters in the neighborhood in which he lives. 


SPENDING MONEY. 


Money is made to spend. Some people 
think it is made to spend foolishly, to pan¬ 
der to pride, and the appetites, without a 
judicious discrimination of its legitimate 
use. “Does he ever spend any money ?” is 
supposed to be a squelcher of a question that 
puts the subject of the question out of busi 
ness. The proper answer is prompt and to 
the point, “Yes/’ because all men spend all 
the money they have. No men, as a rule, 
keep money—that is, to hoard and hide away 
the money iself. A man who will hide money 
and not use it at all is a degenerate. All 
men spend their money. Some spend it to 
get more; they invest it in channels of trade, 
of business and projects. Those are the best 
spenders, for they produce a demand for 
labor, and their money goes into the hands 
of workers, of people who use their money 
for the general good, for the necessities of 
life and the progress of society. But the 
man who asks “Does he spend money ?” would 
convey the idea that he must blow it in, live 
fast and be an all round dissipator and bum- 




50 


Meditations. 


mer in order to be popular, and the ideal 
man. A man with such a concept had bet¬ 
ter take himself outside of the human crowd, 
and into the solitude, and extricate himself 
from the noisy procession of the world, and 
then and there ask himself a few hard ques¬ 
tions; ask himself what return he has re¬ 
ceived for the money he spent for alcohol, for 
gambling, and for dissipation. And the an¬ 
swer he will get will be a red nose, a ruined 
stomach, physical degeneracy, irretrievable 
poverty and a mental imbecility that will 
send him to an early demise, unwept, unhon¬ 
ored and unmourned. 

Money is a medium of exchange, and is 
often exchanged for illegitimate purposes as 
well as for those that are proper and legiti¬ 
mate, but the latter exchange insures probity 
of character, respectability, honor and inde¬ 
pendence. Do not allow a man with a per¬ 
verted mind to hypnotize you and make 
things appear differently from what they 
really are, by sneeringly and ignorantly re¬ 
marking about somebody else better than he 
is, “Does he ever spend anything?” He is 
acting the fool and lacks mental breadth, 
and presumes that you are as narrow and ig¬ 
norant as he is. A little plain independent 
thought on such occasions will not hurt you, 
and if you draw on a vigorous and healthy 
mind, it will give you the kind of good that 
will be pleasurable, safe and satisfactory on 
all occasions. 




Individuality. 


51 


INDIVIDUALITY. 


Individuality is an undefinable something 
that is sure to be felt in any community. 
Some people deprecate and hate it under the 
mistaken idea that it is detrimental to the 
present and future welfare of the human 
family. Superstition and settled habit are 
the most implacable foes to individuality. 
Everybody has a little of both of those stops 
to progress. It was Mark Twain who re¬ 
marked that he supposed that everybody had 
a superstition, that even he had his; for in¬ 
stance, when walking down the street and 
about to meet a creditor, he had a supersti¬ 
tion to cross over to the other side of the 
street. Individuality always asserts itself. 
One man is silent. He may not have any 
ideas, and then he may; possibly he hasn’t 
the ability or inclination to talk. This is 
sometimes the fact with some of the world’s 
greatest men. Other men talk. Some talk 
sense, and others nonsense. Some can think 
sense but talk nonsense; but a man can’t 
think nonsense and talk sense. Like Gold¬ 
smith a man may write like an angel and 
talk like poor Poll! But the talker is lia¬ 
ble to get into trouble. If a man believes a 
thing in politics, religion or science, he be¬ 
lieves it because the evidences satisfy his 
mind. He isn’t a criminal nor a sinner be 
cause the evidences that satisfy somebodv 



52 


Meditations. 


else’s mind do not satisfy his own mind. 
The judges of a supreme court frequently 
disagree from each other after reading the 
law and the testimony in a given case. A 
man may try to conceal his thoughts by 
agreeing with public opinion against his hon 
est convictions: That is both hypocrisy and 
dishonesty. Popular sentiment may laud 
him, but he will condemn himself, and self 
condemnation is a greater canker than the 
disapprobation of the populace. If he be 
honest and declare his sentiments—the true 
state of his mind—he is then hated for com¬ 
ing in contact with generally accepted no¬ 
tions of his time, and is harshly judged. A 
man is not to be condemned because he be¬ 
lieves a proposition, even if he be wrong. If 
he be wrong and believes he is right, he is at 
least honest, and he has been exercising and 
developing his talents. A mistaken man 
with good intent is never a serious menace 
to any community. A just God or man will 
never judge a man harshly for being honest: 
But a man will ever be exalted for honesty. 
That, will be rewarding honest effort, and en¬ 
couraging development. If a man were to 
be punished if he were honestly wrong, that 
would put a premium on hypocrisy, and a re¬ 
ward for dishonesty, and would be a con¬ 
demnation for freedom and honesty. Let a 
man be free to assert his individualities, and 
if he be wrong it gives you a chance to con¬ 
vince him of his errors; but look out, for you 


Party Machines and Principle . 53 

are in the way to be convinced of your own 
error. That man is a person of conviction 
and you are storming a Boerish Kopje. 
What of it? You will not be vanquished un¬ 
less you ought to be, and if so the other man 
has the truth on his side. Truth Avon’t hurt 
you. It will do you good. It is sometimes 
like a cool plunge bath; you shrink from the 
first contact, but after that it is agreeable. 
Then it is advisable under all circumstances 
to cultivate an individual and personal lik¬ 
ing for truth, wherever that may lead you, 
for truth is mighty and will make you free; 
and that is the power of individualism. 


PARTY MACHINES AND PRINCIPLE. 


Some men hate a machine. There have 
been labor troubles over labor saving ma¬ 
chines—progressive devices for the public 
good. A political machine is similar to a 
mechanical device. Men will rail like an ill- 
managed gasoline engine in a printing shop 
—but it makes for good in the long run just 
the same. All great parties have a machine 
that has the effectiveness of a machine gun. 
The party that stands up against it must get 
together under the lead of a first-class gen¬ 
eral or it will go down to ignominious defeat. 
The opponents of a ruling party usually have 
too much theory instead of practice. Their 
party has too many cranks to hit a man on 




54 


Meditations. 


the revolution of a wheel. The cranks are 
all right from the cranky standpoint, and 
each one insists on revolving the wheel his 
particular way. One crank revolves one 
way, and another the other way, and the 
powders become neutralized, and the domi¬ 
nant party, which knows how to run a ma¬ 
chine if nothing else, walks over the cranks 
and takes possession of the seat of power. 
No thinking, level headed man ever agrees 
with every plank in any platform. Many 
men refuse to support a party because they 
cannot agree with all of the planks and say 
they would prefer to go down to defeat for 
the sake of principle rather than support a 
plank to placate some particular class or ele¬ 
ment of the party. That is a reminder of 
the bull that committed suicide by trying to 
butt a locomotive off the track. His cour¬ 
age was all right, but his judgment was very 
poor. 

The world’s progress is made up of com¬ 
promises. The man who is unwilling to com 
promise is usually a stumbling block to 
progress. A refusal to compromise is based 
upon the proposition that his opponent is 
absolutely wrong and that he himself is un¬ 
deniably right. This presumes an egotism 
and a self conceit of the non-compromiser 
that would double discount an ukase of the 
Czar of Russia, for “there’s no other way but 
his w r ay”. These extremists even scorn the 
temptation of legitimate government patron- 


Party Machines and Principle. 55 

age to the victorious party, which patronage 
is part of the fuel to the machine. There are 
thousands of men who appreciate the emolu¬ 
ments of office. What are you going to do 
with them? Will you die for principle and 
let the other fellow enjoy the spoils of office? 
That is all right so far as it goes, but it is 
better to live for principle and also get offi¬ 
cial patronage. Sometimes the man who gets 
his pie is a better principled man than the 
man who would die for a principle. The 
man himself is the biggest principle to him. 

“He who fights and runs away 
May live to fight another day.” 

If the fellow who would die for a princi¬ 
ple would unite on a common ground with a 
party, on one or two points, he would count 
for progress, but by opposing those common 
points he counts for defeat and delay, and 
instead of dying for principle, he is dying to 
defeat principle, and delaying and blocking 
human progress because he cannot have it all 
his own way and at once. There is no occa¬ 
sion to be narrow' about these matters. The 
opposition frequently arrogates to itself a 
deeper research and freer minds, when in 
fact the party in power is frequently much 
broader on the ever present and paramount 
principle of success, necessity, and present 
exigencies of statecraft. The man who 
boasts of breadth and depth is frequently un¬ 
equal to the man who votes his ticket 
straight, and asks no questions. 


56 


Meditations. 


GAMBLING. 


Young men, don’t gamble. You hear of 
the winnings of a gambler, but you seldom 
learn of the losses. All men who gamble 
sometimes win. They often lose. When they 
win they think they are having prosperity, 
and when they lose, that, to them is adver¬ 
sity. The real fact is that if a gambler wins, 
he is suffering adversity, and when he loses 
he is being introduced to prosperity. A win¬ 
ning produces an elation of mind. It is a 
condition of mind that is based upon false 
notions and illusive premises. Gambling 
success is a sort of prelude to failure and 
ruination. Don’t deceive yourself. You are 
no smarter than the other loser who thought 
he could buck another man’s game and win. 
The professional is playing his own game. 
He isn’t taking any chances, but you are tak¬ 
ing many when you endeavor to beat him at 
his own game. The reason you are loser 
when you win is not on account of the con¬ 
dition of yoiw pocketbook, but on account of 
the condition of your mind. A man’s wealth 
is measured by the condition and state of his 
mind. Some men’s ideas seem to coin money. 
The ideas of a gambler are to throw money 
away; not on a business venture; not on a 
mathematical calculation; not on logical 
rules, nor business principles, but in opposi¬ 
tion to the laws of mind and matter. You 



Gambling. 


57 


waive aside the reason; suspend a protesting 
judgment; violate the principle that the ob¬ 
ject of life is not money, but development, 
which includes money and all other laudable 
desires, and you throw away your fortune, 
standing, integrity, dignity, happiness and 
prosperity upon the throw of a card or the 
turn of a wheel. 

A reasoning man who waives aside all of 
the better mental qualities, and throws him¬ 
self into a dark chasm of social, mental and 
moral mediocrity, lacks the mental acumen 
necessary to make a man a vigorous force in 
the world in which he lives. That is why 
gambling success is the beginning of failure; 
and gambling failure is an introduction to 
success; because failure in the start causes 
a man to stop, to pause and to meditate. He 
calls in play the reason and judgment, and 
in exercising his mental powers in the right 
direction lie becomes a more independent, 
virile, progressive and influential man. 
Don’t make a mistake, young man! This is 
the only time 3 011 will ever be a young man 
so far as you know. Mistakes bring distress. 
Little mistakes, when corrected, make you 
stronger sometimes, but don’t allow yourself 
to make the fatal mistake of putting your 
mind upon false premises, for if you do, it 
will make of you a nonentity instead of a 
nature’s nobleman that you ought to be. 


58 


Meditations. 


THE RESULTS OF WAR. 


It is said that the results of war are very 
detrimental to the moral standing of any 
community. War seems to have the effect of 
abnormally arousing the ambitions, at the 
expense of morality and a conscientious re¬ 
gard for other people’s rights. There are 
other derogatory effects. Thousands of young 
men are killed, and die of disease, in war. It 
is disastrous to blot out the lives of so many 
young men. 

It is said that there are two or three per 
cent, more women than men. That is a rea¬ 
sonable surplus. Nature seems to have ar¬ 
ranged matters pretty well. But man’s 
avarice and greed seems to disturb the equi¬ 
librium. Thousands of dead men in battles, 
means thousands of widows and old maids. 
The women of a country should be consulted 
about war. As most of the soldiers are sin¬ 
gle men, war means a few thousand more old 
maids—or polygamy—or worse. There has 
been a millennium promised. It may not be 
the traditional millennium. It will be an 
evolutionary awakening owing to a general 
diffusion of intelligence and commercialism. 
Commerce between nations is becoming so 
extensive that no nation can go to war with¬ 
out seriously interrupting the trade of all 
nations; and every nation indirectly becomes 
an interested party to the wars between 



The Results of War. 


59 


other nations. Then, too, war is becoming 
too expensive. Modern warfare between first 
class nations, costs from one to three million 
dollars per day for each nation. Nations can 
better afford to arbitrate than to burden the 
people with such grievous debts. This and 
other reasons have brought about the Hague 
Tribunal. Money is the chief factor of that 
Tribunal. Nations can scarcely go to war 
unless the millionaires consent. That is one 
beneficent use of millionaires. Money is 
proverbially cowardly and that always 
makes for peace. The unreasoning hot head 
doesn’t like it, but it is a factor in the com¬ 
ing millennium. The reluctance of nations 
to incur burdensome debts; the killing of 
young men and the consequent disturbance 
of the equilibrium of the sexes; the educa¬ 
tion of the people and the growing sentiment 
against war, as an unnecessary, cruel and 
barbarous method to settle human rights, are 
destined soon to do away with all wars, 
which will be followed by a progressive 
awakening of the human mind that will 
make the world a desirable place in which to 
live for all people of all nations without re¬ 
gard to race, color or previous condition of 
servitude. 


60 


Meditations. 


WEAKNESS. 


Weakness is mostly mental; that is, if 
there be such a condition as weakness. There 
is a state however that is called weakness. 
There are synonyms and antonyms, likes and 
unlikes in words. The words seem to be the 
names of ideas—that’s all. Strength is the 
opposite of weakness. One word suggests 
the other by contrast. The words are the ex¬ 
pression of what’s in the man’s mind. 
Words are the index of the man. If a man 
be strong, his statement is strong. If he be 
weak, his thoughts are weak. What is 
termed weakness, sometimes is strength. 
Circumstances will make a man appear 
weak, when he is strong; and appear foolish 
when he is wise; and the principal circum¬ 
stance is the man’s invisible thoughts. Some 
people like flattery. It suits them. It pleases 
the flatterer as much or more than it pleases 
the flattered. Is there anybody who doesn’t 
love flattery? Some people profess to abhor 
flattery. They abhor the word, but they love 
the real thing just the same. Not the sense¬ 
less idiotic babble, but approbation, com¬ 
mendation and approval. The one is the 
babbling of an inferior intellect, the other 
the well tempered approval of an equal. If 
everybody were perfect there would be no 
weakness. There would be nobody to laugh 
at, nobody to cry; no sympathy, no compas- 



Peace. 


61 


sion, no nothing except cold blooded and ex¬ 
asperating indifference. A man’s face and 
mind would be as cold, indifferent and pas¬ 
sive as tlie man in the moon. One man is 
sharp, another dull; one is witty, another 
morose; one is proud, and haughty, another 
simple and commonplace. Do these quali¬ 
ties show strength and weakness, or merely 
essentials? It is a wise man who under¬ 
stands human nature. If a man understands 
a large proportion of the motives of the hu¬ 
man family, he is, indeed, wise and can play 
upon the desires, motives and vanities of 
men like a musician upon the harp. He en¬ 
joys it, and so do they. Both strong and 
both weak. The weakness is the enjoyment 
of both. And the various so-called weak¬ 
nesses produce toleration and the principal 
social enjoyments of human society. 


PEACE. 


The peacemakers seem to be growing in 
numbers. They are good and benevolent 
characters mostly made up of men and 
women of middle and later life. They are 
ripening in age, experience and judicious dis¬ 
cretion. Their desires are not to hurt any¬ 
body, nor to let the warlike hurt themselves. 
Youth and early manhood possess the war 
spirit, while age and experience counsel 
peace. That is because reason and judgment 




62 


Meditations. 


develop later in life. “Thou shalt not covet” 
is a pretty fair command when the covetous¬ 
ness is a desire to get something for nothing 
and against the other fellow’s will: But a 
desire to accumulate by a square deal is 
praiseworthy and moral. 

There is no reason why all international 
disputes should not be settled by some other 
means than by the sword. Nations have re¬ 
fused to arbitrate or adjudicate some ques¬ 
tions. Why? Is reason dangerous? It may 
be dangerous to the nation that covets some¬ 
thing to which it isn’t entitled, but it never 
can be dangerous to the man or nation that 
is satisfied with justice and right. It doesn’t 
hurt a man to do right. If a jury of nations 
say that it is not right for a certain nation 
to do this or that, then the jury of nations 
is right, and the verdict should be conscien¬ 
tiously and strictly respected. There is a 
proud flesh and a false pride. The false 
pride may cause a little irritation when it is 
removed the same as the removal of proud 
flesh. That is better, however, than to kill, 
slay and murder your brothers for the pur¬ 
pose of criminally appropriating a little 
more plunder. 

The nations should establish a court of 
final resort to settle the differences between 
all nations. The people would then become 
wealthier and more moral, and many a young 
man would be permitted to live and enjoy 
life, when otherwise he would be stood up 


Good Resolutions. 


63 


and shot and killed by the unreasonable 
avarice and greed of the ruling powers of na¬ 
tions. Carnegie’s ten million dollar peace gift 
fund is the most handsome individual gift 
ever made to promote brotherly love, peace 
and good will among the nations. 


GOOD RESOLUTIONS. 


New Year’s day is the proverbial time to 
make new resolutions. But reformations 
made indifferently, as they usually are on 
the first of January, soon vanish into the 
pithole of oblivion. It takes ruggedness of 
character to carry out good resolutions, 
which includes a lively conception of the de¬ 
sirability of right doing and the will power 
to carry it out. Most people have the re¬ 
quired natural mental qualifications. They 
sometimes lack in education. A perfect plan 
of education would give the necessary rugged 
character. The perfect plan includes the 
education and development of the whole 
man—the mind and the body. The public 
schools have been directed principally to the 
mind, and of the mind, mainly to the intel¬ 
lect. If the education be mainly of the in¬ 
tellect, then the sensibilities, the will and 
the subconscious mind are neglected. In 
order to maintain the equilibrium it is as 
necessary to develop the emotions as the in¬ 
tellect. The emotions such as love, hate, 




64 


Meditations. 


friendship, joy and the like, constitute the 
sensibilities. Their development arouse a 
man to action. Without them a man has no 
desires, and without desires he is a cold, un¬ 
sympathetic pessimist who has nothing in 
common with higher ideals. A man whose 
sensibilities are well developed is what we 
call a “big hearted” man. He enters into the 
sympathies of the people, laughs with them, 
exchanges courtesies with them, and weeps 
with them. He is a sort of human barometer 
and in touch with the congregated human 
heart. His emotions are large. Perhaps he 
inherited this power and possibly inheri¬ 
tance was strengthened by education. Many 
a man has fallen into a slough of neglected 
sensibilities. Ah, pity! pity! He can’t help 
it. That is the way he is. His talents have 
been neglected. Not much can be expected 
of him. In many respects he is a menace be¬ 
cause he is not a full grown man. He is an 
object, and principally beneficial as an object 
lesson, and the world can draw a moral or 
lesson from him at arms length the same as 
it would philosophize about a cannibal. 

Let a man be a specialist if he will, and 
specialism means success, but as a condition 
precedent to that success, in full measure he 
must be a well and fully developed man, 
mentally, morally and physically. 


Sense and Simplicity. 


65 


SENSE AND SIMPLICITY. 


Did it ever occur to you that there is a 
close relation between common sense and 
simplicity? Sometimes the sense is dulled 
by an inactive, non-comprehensive brain, and 
at other times it is dwarfed by an active ego¬ 
tism that sees nothing but a bombastic wit 
and a consciousness of self importance that 
belittles men who are bigger, brighter and 
smarter. 

That is sense, but not what is ordinarily 
known as common sense. Common sense ex¬ 
emplifies simplicity. It comprehends the fit¬ 
ness of things. It is able to look at itself 
and weigh itself as though it were weighing 
an objective instead of a subjective. It can 
see ourselves as others see us. Common sense 
comprehends the practical life and the im¬ 
perfections of self. It knows the fact that 
supposed brilliancy discloses glaring imper¬ 
fections, while comprehension produces mod¬ 
esty, and what is modesty but simplicity? 

Good sense and simplicity always treat 
other people with pleasant and agreeable 
consideration. Those qualities correct evils, 
but never hurt anybody unless it be a case 
of self defense, or necessity; and if it be such 
a case, then the opponent must beware of the 
powerful weapons of common sense and sim¬ 
plicity. They are penetrating weapons, and 
are the burnished truths of irresistible, 



66 


Meditations. 


discriminating discernment. There is no 
effort to shine. The desire is to ac¬ 
complish. This produces a simplicity that 
is charming and effective. It is sometimes 
called good breeding. It is however plain 
common sense, which is a plain, comfortable 
and admirable companion. 

Even the unbalanced egotist loves a per¬ 
son of common sense, because it is an attrac¬ 
tion to the simplicity of truth, and the 
equilibrium of satisfied sense, but not of con¬ 
tent, because content is an inactivity that 
falls short of common sense. The simplicity 
of content is that of a dullard, and dullness 
is not simplicity, but ignorance. 

Common sense and simplicity of char¬ 
acter usually go together, and are elements 
of greatness. A great man is usually not 
recognized by people until he works out his 
ends by silent, noiseless processes. He is 
finally recognized by his objective accom¬ 
plishments. You can see the objects but not 
the mind. These qualities are inherent in 
the man and are improved by practice. 

Common sense and simplicity are the 
royal road to success, happiness and true 
pleasure. The possession of these qualities 
are priceless jewels that command opulence, 
self respect, and the considerable acclama¬ 
tion of your neighbors. All people have some 
common sense, but in some people it looks 
like a small object a half mile away through 
an inverted spy glass. It improves, however, 


The Snow Storm. 


67 


with experience and age, and that is the rea¬ 
son that older people are sometimes re¬ 
spected and venerated by the community in 
general. 


THE SNOW STORM. 


Last week there was a heavy snow fall. 
That was suggestive. The poet will write a 
poem on the “Beautiful Snow”, “The Bab¬ 
bling Brook”, or “The Last Rose of Sum¬ 
mer”. The mention of these subjects tends 
to produce a derisive laugh and a desire for 
the pedagogic “next” on the failure of the 
student in the scholastic classroom. Com¬ 
mon subjects, however, are not quite all worn 
out—not quite. As an objective the subject 
may be quite threadbare, but as a subjective 
within the mind of the thinker it is never 
exhausted,—because the subjective is in¬ 
finity. 

Snow is an emblem of purity. It is cer¬ 
tainly more attractive than a bull fight or a 
prize fight. The whiteness of snow suggests 
purity—the perfect and ideal. But purity is 
naturalness and harmony. Snow, then, sug¬ 
gests the harmonious, and the natural in na¬ 
ture and human existence, and harmony and 
naturalness presuppose freedom. It is curi¬ 
ous how truth analyzes and returns home. 
Purity is the positive in life and nature. It 
is distinguished as the opposite of impurity 




68 


Meditations. 


and the negative of life’s sound philosophies. 
The positive includes life, progress and 
virtue; the negative includes death, retro¬ 
gression and decay. The negative, when it 
blasts a flower, a fruit or vegetation, is called 
disease, or a work of nature. When the nega¬ 
tive, by working upon the mind, and demon¬ 
strated through the body, produces remorse, 
ill health or a ruined character, it is often 
called immorality and sin. 

There are occasions when certain negative 
influences have controlled the mind, and for 
awhile have predominated over the positive 
and progressive influences of the person, 
while sometimes the positive existence works 
out to a higher standing by means of and 
through the negative life. 

The immoral negative sometimes produces 
good. Experience seems to be the most effec¬ 
tive teacher. It forces its lessons with a 
power that is nearly irresistible. Sometimes 
the negative brings irretrievable physical 
ruination. Those cases are deplorable. Some¬ 
times this is because of accident, and at 
other times a want of understanding. A 
mind that is alive and sensitive to truth is 
corrected and made wiser by contact with 
the negative in nature. There is no avoid¬ 
ance of the negative conditions in human ex¬ 
istence. Those forces are resources that will 
be of incalculable aid, or of relative destruc¬ 
tion. A cataract can destroy life or be har¬ 
nessed for the use of man. Tolstoi became 


The Snow Storm. 


69 


nearly ruined in health by mixing with the 
ruinous practices of the Russian nobility. 
He had an opportunity to study the various 
passions of the human mind. He was accu¬ 
mulating knowledge in its intricate workings 
of the faculties, and from all phases of the 
human station. He was going to school— 
the school of nature and experience. He 
awoke from his foolishness and indifference 
and left the society of the nobility, retired to 
his estate in central Russia and came to be 
recognized as one of the best thinkers and 
philosophers of his age. 

Purity, too, is a relative term. There is 
always a little different standard of morals 
for everyone. Certain fundamental stand¬ 
ards are recognized by a nation, while 
other m(oral standards are recognized 
by the entire race. It is, then, neither wise 
nor fair to be too nice or exacting in judging 
another man’s morals, especially when that 
other man has conscientious scruples accord¬ 
ing to his light, and perhaps you are pure ac¬ 
cording to yours. One may occupy a more 
elevated plane of consciousness and under¬ 
standing than the other, but not of conscien¬ 
tious morality. The man on the higher plane 
may have a larger duty than the other, and 
if that duty isn’t governed by a broad and 
liberal tolerance then he is not on the plane 
of understanding that he thought he was. 

Instead of coercing the lower man he 
should be educated—lifted up and respected. 


70 


M editations. 


Purity encourages tolerance, charity and 
breadth of understanding, and is a growing 
progressive force. The negative force is in¬ 
tolerant, narrow, and disposed to force 
others to do and to act according to the idea 
of the negative conception of right and 
wrong. 

You who are disposed to judge your neigh¬ 
bors from a standpoint of any creed or pol¬ 
itics should first examine yourselves and see 
whether you are governed by a progressive, 
positive force, or by a retrogressive, intoler¬ 
ant idea that brings you into disrepute with 
the thinking people and makes you known 
as a man of small caliber and shortness of 
mental grasp, which too often is the direct 
result of an uneducated bias that denies the 
idea of freedom and the consequent purity of 
character that is harmonious with universal 
truth, that makes of you a liliputian, instead 
of an intellectual giant, and thus cuts off 
your power because the wiser, freer people 
know that you are governed by the dicta of 
somebody else, who perhaps is a much 
weaker man than yourself. 


Industry. 


71 


INDUSTRY. 


For several centuries there has been a 
class of thinkers who have desired to live 
with the minimum of w r ork. Some of these 
thinkers ought to know better. Others of 
them have an uninformed simplicity that 
makes them easy dupes to the catchy but il¬ 
logical rhetoric of a person who believes in a 
minimum of work. Eight hours a day is 
enough for some kinds of work, and for other 
work even less hours are sufficient. But 
many of these people, for ordinary work are 
now in favor of eight hours per day; after 
that six hours; later four hours; and finally 
two hours of work per day is enough, so they 
say. 

It is curious what delusions will take 
possession of some pretty good minds. The 
accomplishment of that ideal would mean 
disaster and retrogression. It would prob¬ 
ably invite and cultivate idleness, immoral¬ 
ity, degradation, ennui, dissatisfaction and 
decay. The man, both physical and mental, 
requires employment—labor—and when a 
person answers this by saying he can use a 
punching bag it isn’t answered by any means. 
A punching bag is all right, but it is no sub¬ 
stitute for honest toil. The toiler has an 
object. There is no object in the use of a 
punching bag, except as it is created by an 
abstract exercise of the will; but labor is the 



72 


Meditations. 


concrete, urged on by the motive of desire,— 
the most powerful, active, progressive force 
in the world. While a man is punching a bag 
he could plant a tree or build a house. Work, 
instead of being a disgrace, is an honor and 
a pleasure. 

The man who has no work, or who has 
work coupled with no desire in connection 
with his work, is an aimless individual who 
is likely to go to the river and drown himself, 
or take some other route to the unknown. 
Nature works all of the time. There appears 
to be no rest for Nature or Nature’s God, and 
the man who is trying to relieve the human 
family from work is trying also to destroy 
the happiness and prosperity of man, by an 
injudicious attempt to better his condition, 
which attempt is based upon a false concep¬ 
tion of the immediate and ultimate objects 
of existence that presupposes the simplicity 
of barbarism as the ideal life to which the 
race should return, instead of passing to a 
higher and grander plane of civilized exist¬ 
ence that is brought about by ceaseless, cal¬ 
culating work and endeavor. 


A Free Mind. 


73 


A FREE MIND. 


Liberty is the ideal of the man. Not the 
physical man, except as an outward demon¬ 
stration of the mentality; but freedom is the 
unbiased, intelligent action of a healthy hu¬ 
man mind. If the mind be healthy and in¬ 
telligent it is in condition to receive, analyze 
and discriminate on matters brought to the 
attention. But no mind is free unless it can 
divest itself of bias, which is a difficult thing 
to accomplish. Minds vary in capacity and 
strength. A man with a weak mind is not to 
blame because he is not as strong as his 
neighbor with a strong mind. Perhaps he 
was born with one talent. The man with one 
talent may mistake license for liberty. The 
man with ten talents may force the man with 
one talent to live within the law of liberty 
instead of within the anarchy of license. 
This produces strife, friction and discord. 
This strife prevents the liberty of ten talents 
from becoming a dictator through vanity and 
elevates the one talent to a higher plane of 
liberty. 

There is no perfection; no rest for saint 
or sinner. You don’t want any, for rest in¬ 
dicates decay. Strife as a sign of the times 
doesn’t mean a failure, a human farce wind¬ 
ing up as a human tragedy. It was ever 
thus,—it was worse. The world was the com¬ 
munity in which a man lived: The commu- 



74 


Meditations. 


nity in which the man now lives is the civil¬ 
ized world. The telegraph records the his¬ 
tory of each day.. The attention is called to 
crime now, more than it was in the past. 
This is because of the easy accumulation of 
news. The strife and friction is a leveling 
process. The one talent rises higher. The 
ten talents become more practical and toler¬ 
ant. There is a blending, a liberty, growth, 
and the world is growing better. That is the 
process and the world is become more edu¬ 
cated and wiser. The mind is improving, and 
if the world be growing worse by mental im¬ 
provement, then ignorance is better than 
knowledge, and it is criminal to be learned, 
folly to be wise, and virtue is a product of 
ignorance: No! No! The plan of the human 
mind is liberty, not license; happiness, not 
woe; success, not failure: To think with 
freedom, whether the conclusions be true or 
false, is the mark of a superior mind and 
stamps that man as a nature’s nobleman 
whether his conclusions be right or wrong, 
false or true, for otherwise a man would be 
punished for coming to a wrong conclusion, 
however honest, or rewarded for coming to a 
right conclusion, however dishonest, which 
would make a man a criminal for being an 
honest thinker, which is a violation of the 
plain common sense of the ordinary mind. 

Verily the world is growing better. This 
is not according to the doctrine of some 
creeds; but it conforms to reason and his- 


Democracy. 


75 


tory. If it were not true the race would de¬ 
teriorate and vanish into nothingness, be¬ 
cause there is no standstill, and the man is 
either lessening into a nonentity or growing 
and expanding into the broad and unlimited 
field of infinity. The retrograde and stand¬ 
still are absurd; the expansion and broaden¬ 
ing are the only reasonable alternative. Free 
thought and sincerity are not offenses, but 
virtues, and let no man fear the final results 
thereof. 


DEMOCRACY. 


Democracy is the freedom of the man 
with a proper respect for the rights of other 
men, w T hich promotes ideas and the liberty 
and safety to express them. The United 
States has ninety millions of people—ninety 
million thought powers producing ideas; 
that is, some of them produce ideas. These 
ideas are infinite in number and variety; but 
they can generally be classified into political, 
scientific, literary, business or religious 
ideas. Political ideas usually relate to de¬ 
mocracy or republicanism, monarchy, an¬ 
archy and socialism. They are divisions and 
subdivisions of thought as a central entity, 
the same as animal, vegetable and mineral 
are divisions of the material world as a com¬ 
posite object. 




76 


Meditations. 


A democracy is the thought equilibrium 
between a despotism and anarchy. A despo¬ 
tism or absolute monarchy is centralized 
power, usually in one man. Anarchy is de¬ 
centralized power, or no power, save in the 
individual who is supposed to be a law unto 
himself—an individual perfection. But as 
individual perfection is impossible, anarchy 
is a chimerical vision of an imperfect mind. 
Democracy is the resultant idea of both ex¬ 
tremes—monarchy and anarchy. 

There are very few people of a democracy 
who desire either extreme. One party favors 
centralization, the other individualism. They 
are the balancing powers in a republic. The 
two parties are two great machines. The ma¬ 
jority of ideas in either machine controls 
that machine. The centralization party is 
stronger because it is more united; the in¬ 
dividualistic party is weaker, but is more 
productive of ideas, because it is a case of 
individualism as opposed to machinery. A 
machine is necessary generally to enforce an 
idea, and after considering all objections it 
must be conceded that the machine has ex¬ 
ecutive ability—it does things. Sometimes 
it does too much; or something that it 
shouldn’t do, and when that happens to the 
extent of arousing a concentrated opposition 
in the individualistic people then you see 
them get together,—the socialists, anar¬ 
chists, federationists, labor unions, liberals 
and all other shades of opposition compris- 


Democracy. 


77 


ing a nebulous mass of conflicting ideas, un¬ 
compact, scattered, disorganized, differing 
among themselves, frequently defeated but 
never annihilated, because you cannot anni¬ 
hilate ideas, but the divergent thoughts find 
common cause in a single idea and then the 
party in power hears a thunder clap. 

A machine is necessary to enforce an 
idea, and if a class of ideas desire to enforce 
a measure or a policy, that class should en¬ 
deavor to control the machine, for otherwise 
the centralization party will invariably get 
away with the goods. 

The particular time for free and untram¬ 
meled discussion of political ideas is before 
the convention, or after election—that is, in 
a man’s own party, but the issues between 
the respective parties are properly discussed 
at any time. 

A good citizen should not hesitate to dis¬ 
agree with any great thinker, but he must be¬ 
ware that his opposition be reasonable and 
sensible. He has as much right politically 
to enforce his idea as has any other man. 
Let him make his fight. It is no discredit for 
a man to express his wholesome thoughts. If 
he doesn’t express them, he will not be known 
as a force. If he does express them, it is 
either to maintain them or to go down in 
defeat, and in either event the world is 
better, for all discussion is an endeavor of 
complicated truth to assert itself. 


78 


Meditations. 


A man must not be bound to tradition, 
either in politics or any other question, for 
man’s principal duty is to discover truth and 
to fight for it, and every person should en¬ 
deavor to enforce his practical and progres¬ 
sive ideas, but not usually to the extent of 
decentralization by rebellion from the ma¬ 
chine in the progress of a battle. The time 
to criticize the cause or conduct of a battle 
is not in the midst of the conflict. That is the 
time to fight. That is when the rule of ac¬ 
tion transcends the rule of reason. The man, 
for a time, is part of the united, powerful, 
concentrated political machine. This is ap¬ 
plicable to a political campaign. After the 
battle is over, the machine is a latent force. 
The reason again asserts itself. The critic is 
free, and he ought to be, and if the plan of 
battle were wrong, he should criticize any 
man, great or small, or his policies, for the 
purpose of making a grander, truer fight for 
progress in the next battle. This policy of 
ideas both subordinates and exalts a man, 
and makes him a better and a more potent 
force in the administration of a democracy. 


Work . 


79 


WORK. 


Sancho Panza said “God bless the man 
who first invented sleep.” It were better to 
have said “God bless the man who first in¬ 
vented work.” Sleep is all right; it is rest: 
it is mental recuperation to enable more 
work. Work is activity, life, progress, pros¬ 
perity, success and happiness. A busy 
worker is a much sought person; a drone is a 
piece of clay without much mentality. The 
mental is what compels recognition. Work 
is a demonstration of mental activity. How¬ 
ever, work does not mean drudgery all of the 
time; a change of work is recreation, rest; 
but much physical rest and inactivity other 
than sleep is sickness and decay. Then give 
us action and work, for that is life. 

It is said “A man is a miniature world in 
working form.” That is a good definition of 
a man. Then give us work, because that is 
the purpose for which we are here. It fol¬ 
lows then that he who would like to become 
wealthy to avoid work has an impossible 
ideal, which would produce unhappiness 
could he attain it, and if attained and put 
into practice would produce decay and death 
in that man. Therefore work is the salva¬ 
tion of the individual and the race. Eight 
hours per day will do for some kinds of wage 
work, but actual work, in its variety, should 
be continually pursued. “What is one man’s 



80 


Meditations. 


meat is another man’s poison” is applicable 
to work. That is why all people like some 
kinds of work and dislike other kinds. That 
is the variety of work and of disposition. 
Work with adaptability is pleasant and pro¬ 
duces happiness and long life. Those who 
look down upon you because you are a 
worker are empty headed. They can’t help 
it because they don’t know any better. Some 
day they, too, may see the world as it is. 
That chance of success is left open to them. 
If they grasp the chance they will have a 
revelation—an intuitive comprehension of 
the equities of nature. Then let us all es¬ 
teem work, and try to be as happy, cheerful 
and beneficial as possible. 


BOND AND FREE. 


Bond and Free are relative terms. They 
are opposites and intermingle. There is no 
absolute freedom in men’s affairs. Bonds 
lessen freedom; bonds of relationship, of 
poverty, of debt, of ignorance of mind. A 
man invests, contracts a debt, and is honor¬ 
able and poor. He is bonded—tied up. He 
cannot get more money, all of which is worm¬ 
wood to him. This is because of the state of 
his mind, and of his purse. Nations are 
bonded. It seems to be a necessity of the 
present system. Bonds seem to have an ex¬ 
pansive force. They are backed by credit, 




Bond and Free. 


81 


and credit is a latent power. Bonds seem 
to be a utilization of a latent force. They 
draw on the present and the future. The 
same is the rule with personal debts. The 
debt gives the debtor expansive force, but 
chains him in the future. He has pledged 
himself to a service. The creditor must have 
his interest—his tribute. The debtor sur¬ 
renders his freedom with the object of get¬ 
ting more freedom further on. The bonding 
process always lessens freedom, and some¬ 
times ultimately makes more freedom. A 
debt or bond is the weapon of desire. It is a 
good weapon or a poor one, according to the 
judgment or luck of the debtor. If a debtor 
encumbers himself beyond his power to re¬ 
cover, his desire reaches beyond his judg¬ 
ment. He then becomes a disgraced slave—a 
damson shorn of his locks. This is a view of 
the bond and free from a sordid and com¬ 
mercial standpoint. The same rules are ap¬ 
plicable in the mental world. Most people 
are tied up, bonded as it were, to opinions 
and prejudices. They owe a debt to freedom, 
but are so heavily bonded to prejudice that 
they are unable to pay the debt. They refuse 
to put their minds in a receptive state to ac¬ 
cumulate more knowledge as a basis of a 
sounder judgment. These opinions are fre¬ 
quently instilled into the mind in childhood 
and youth, and are never questioned there¬ 
after to any great extent. These opinions 
are a mental bondage that fears to investi 


82 


Meditations . 


gate further because of a probable calamity 
pursuing a free mind. A man without a 
mind is at best an idiot. A man with a mind, 
and normal, is a fully developed man to the 
extent that his mind is free to investigate, to 
form opinions, and to decide according to his 
best judgment without any fear of the conse¬ 
quences. To a free mind, consequences are 
truths. Truths don’t hurt a man unless he 
deserves to be hurt—that is in the pursuit of 
knowledge. Truth is harmony. A free mind 
is not in harmony with an enslaved mind—a 
mind that is tied by the chains of prejudice. 
A free mind is in harmony with itself and 
with nature, because it recognizes truth 
wherever it may be found. A desire for truth 
is the greatest desire in the world. That 
doesn’t include a desire to warp everything 
in order to prove some particular theory—to 
establish a creed, or a political measure, or 
a scientific proposition. A desire to know 
the truth, without fear of consequences, re¬ 
gardless of where it may lead you, and with 
a determination to divest your mind of preju¬ 
dice, is indeed to enter into the true nobility 
of manhood, where you can experience 
neither shame nor occasion for apology, and 
will make of you one of the greatest of the 
great, and what may be termed a philosopher 
and an honest man. 


Opportunity. 


83 


OPPORTUNITY. 


It is said that opportunity knocks at 
every man’s door once; but the saying, like 
many other maxims, is utterly false in con¬ 
ception, and inadequate as a statement, and 
is at variance with common experience. Op¬ 
portunities are in a man’s head. The outside 
world is the complement of the world within 
the man’s head. If there be no man, then 
there is no world, because the outside world 
is merely the response to the inside man or 
inside world through the vehicle of the 
senses. The question is akin to the old propo¬ 
sition that if a tree should fall in a solitude 
a thousand miles from a conscious being 
would there be a noise? It is supposed that 
the universe is full of sound vibrations, but 
if the vibrations come not in contact with 
the auditory nerve, then of course there can 
be no noise, because the noise is only the con¬ 
scious elfect of the vibration on the nerve. 
If there be a man, to him there is a world; 
and if there be no man there can be no world, 
because nothing knows nothing, and the 
world is merely the conscious expression of 
the outside to the inside or to the mind. 
Therefore there is no opportunity except 
through the concept of the mind. The world 
is full of outside opportunities. One man 
sees them, and another man doesn’t. One 
man will see one opportunity in an outside 



84 


Meditations. 


objective, and another man will see an en¬ 
tirely different opportunity in the same ob¬ 
ject. The opportunity is in the man’s mind. 

A man is a creator of opportunities. A 
man who is endowed with a good imagina¬ 
tion, and a clear concept, fhay or may not 
have splendid opportunities. If the imagina¬ 
tion be controlled by a good reasoning fac¬ 
ulty, and a sound judgment, the man becomes 
a good financier and a powerful man of 
affairs. The reason and judgment being de¬ 
veloped later in life gives a man of good im¬ 
agination and conception a better opportu¬ 
nity to get wealthy in late life, because the 
opportunities in the man-head creates, con¬ 
trols and manipulates the possibilities of the 
outside world with the unerring accuracy of 
a man who knows, and knows he knows. The 
men who have had the opportunities in their 
heads have created the machines, the giant 
corporations and the trusts: They have 
thus, to a limited extent, lessened the oppor¬ 
tunities of others, but in other respects the 
opportunities are multiplied because an op¬ 
portunity utilized develops other opportuni¬ 
ties. Utilized opportunities have been abused 
by combinations and trusts, but an undesir¬ 
able condition always brings an appropriate 
remedy'in the not distant future. There is 
a sentiment of pessimism with some people. 
The sunlight looks like pale moonlight. They 
think someone else has cornered all of the 
opportunities. A trust may have cornered 


Opportunity. 


85 


the beef market, or the wheat or corn prod¬ 
uct, or any other objective chattel, but no 
trust has, as yet, cornered the human mind. 
Opportunity is infinity because thought is 
infinity, and no fence, can circumscribe its 
limits. 

This is true of little projects or great 
ones, and the mind that is free cannot be 
brought to hopeless distress, because it is not 
possible for any trust or combination of pow¬ 
er to keep continual definite information 
about the processes of the human mind. 
Abuses have been, now are, and ever Avill be. 
That is a condition of growth, and is because 
of the boundless opportunities and possibili¬ 
ties of the human mind; but there has not 
been, is not now, nor ever will be, abuses that 
will be perpetual, because an abuse that can 
be brought about by the opportunity that un¬ 
folds itself in one mind, can, and will be 
checkmated, or made to serve the general wel¬ 
fare by the equally resourceful processes of 
some other mind. A poor thinker is a weak 
antagonist, but a good thinker is a powerful 
foeman. Physical valor with an inferior in¬ 
tellect does not constitute a mighty antagon¬ 
ist, but either a strong or w r eak physical 
force with a bright active mental force im¬ 
mediately produces, 

“The stern joy that warriors feel, 

In foeman worthy of their steel ” 


86 


Meditations. 


There is no end of world projects, and 
world opportunities to everybody; the dearth, 
if any, is in the individual mind. This does 
not imply that two bodies can occupy the 
same space at the same time, but rather that 
there is an infinity of space. One mind will 
create opportunities seemingly out of noth¬ 
ing, and another will see no opportunity at 
all. The thinking process is laborious some¬ 
times but thought means growth in the field 
of opportunity. 

Criticism of existing conditions is all 
right. It helps to maintain the social equilib¬ 
rium; but care must be taken that the 
critic does not become the cynic. Approve 
the critic and reprove the cynic. The former 
is useful, while the latter is a stumbling 
block to society and the world. The cynic 
sees no opportunity except to criticize and 
ridicule. Opportunity to him is a closed 
book, and he has become sour, and looks at 
life as an inordinate farce. He is asleep to 
the slumbering opportunities in his own 
mind, which, if he would turn his attention 
to discover, would bring him pleasure in the 
acquisition of peace, opulence and power. 


Belief an Element of Long Life . 87 


BELIEF AN ELEMENT OF LONG LIFE. 


In good health and with a sound mind, we 
desire to live. A man poor in health or with 
an unsound mind sometimes courts death. 
He accepts death philosophically on great oc¬ 
casions or exigencies; but no sane, sound 
man seeks death to get rid of life. If, as 
some people say, the desire to live forever 
proves a life after death, then the desire 
proves more strongly endless life in the phy¬ 
sical form, because all people fight death, 
and they know nothing of a hereafter that is 
based upon satisfactory evidence. Science is 
fighting disease, and the average of human 
existence is continually being lengthened by 
persistent research. Death is generally a 
stage of disease. If all disease be cured or 
banished, then death can result only from ac¬ 
cident or intention. Belief is one of the most 
potent elements in human existence. It some¬ 
times kills people outright, and frequently 
shortens their days. When a man has a long 
lived ancestry, he believes that he too will be 
long lived. He is backing up his future by his¬ 
tory. He will live long because he has faith. 
It isn’t true in fact, however, that history al 
ways repeats itself. The man lives long not 
because his ancestry was long lived, but be¬ 
cause the long life of his ancestry inspired a 
faith and belief in himself. The long lived 
ancestry is the logic upon which his belief is 



88 


Meditations. 


founded, and if he can get any other reason 
that will answer his purpose as well, w T ho 
will say that it w r ould not have the same ef¬ 
fect? A man with a short lived ancestry, by 
a firm will to live long, backed up by scien¬ 
tific knowledge, and by careful personal at¬ 
tention can lengthen his days, if he brings to 
his aid a confidence formed upon an intelli 
gent belief. He is then attaining a higher 
plane of understanding. Ponce de Leon 
sought the spring of perpetual life in Florida. 
That w r as from a desire to prolong physical 
being. Down through the ages men have de¬ 
sired and fought for physical perpetuity. 
They sought it from outside agencies and for¬ 
got the most powerful factor, which was 
their own personality. “The proper study of 
mankind is man” says Pope, but it is doubt¬ 
ful whether he understood the magnitude of 
his ow r n statement. Mankind is certainly the 
greatest study of man, for to eliminate him, 
then to him there is nothing else, because 
subjectively the universe is the man. If there 
be a foundation for perpetual life, it must be 
w r ithin the man himself. If he can lengthen 
his life a few years, then why not a few cen¬ 
turies? To accomplish this would be to at¬ 
tain a higher plane of understanding. The 
life span of human effort has been and is now 
increasing. We are growing better and wiser. 
We are ashamed of much of the past, but 
look hopefully to the future. We are gradu¬ 
ally but surely approaching a higher plane. 


Belief an Element of Long Life. 89 

Let no man rebel against the idea of extraor¬ 
dinary longevity, for to do so is to con¬ 
demn himself to death before he ought to die, 
if he ought to die at all. A man seldom 
reaches a higher mark than that to which he 
aspires; and if by believing that he will live 
many years more than the supposed life 
period, or forever, and he thus lives ten, fif¬ 
teen, or more years longer than he would 
have lived with a different belief, then his re¬ 
ward is so great that he can afford to listen 
with the utmost good humor to the sarcastic 
jibes and supercilious remarks of those who 
are unwittingly willing to condemn them¬ 
selves to death on the illogical notion that 
what has been, always will be, ignoring the 
fact that history is not repeating itself, and 
that there has been more progress in science 
and art, and outside of former history, in the 
last century than in many previous centuries, 
and perhaps more than in all former history. 
“Know thyself” says the poet, but when man 
attains that high ideal of knowing himself it 
is safe to say that the priceless secrets of the 
universe will be his, and he will stand forth 
a nobleman able to command all reasonable 
things, including perpetual life, if that be 
desirable. 


90 


Meditations. 


DON’T BE AFRAID OF WORK. 


Some men and combinations of men are 
advocating and preaching the doctrine that 
under a proper system of government the 
working people could support themselves on 
two or three hours work per day. This is a 
pernicious doctrine. Some people seem to 
think that labor is a curse. They are deluded 
—sadly deluded. Labor is a blessing and a 
beneficent necessity. All happy cheerful peo¬ 
ple are workers. Not workers that are 
watching the clock, fearful that they will 
work overtime, or expend more energy than 
they ought. 

It is necessary to have some one at the 
head of a business. That man works over¬ 
time. Eight hours won’t do for him. He 
works nearer fifteen hours. He has to, other¬ 
wise he would become insolvent and his em¬ 
ployes would be without a job. The man 
who runs his own business never watches the 
clock, and if he strikes, he strikes against 
success. 

Work develops physical and mental 
strength. It cultivates morality, humility 
and goodness of character, while indolence 
brings selfishness, vanity, arrogance, melan¬ 
choly, intemperance and immorality. There 
is a great increase of wealth in the world, 
but a part of the so-called wealth is merely 
watered stock—a bauble. The wealth is not 



Don’t Be Afraid of Work . 91 

equally distributed, and it is a good thing it 
is not. A sudden, or gradual, even distribu¬ 
tion of wealth would probably produce vice 
and debauchery. 

Eight hours will for for some work. A 
day’s work should not be less than that ex¬ 
cept in particular occasions or kinds of work. 
Wealth doesn’t cause happiness and content¬ 
ment. It frequently produces discontent and 
misery. It is the game—the fight for exist¬ 
ence and the winning out that pleases. 

The people who want wealth to squander 
it, have desires of profligacy that tend to de¬ 
bauch instead of purifying the character. 
Education in a narrow trend, with the mental 
inability to grasp the broad domain of com¬ 
prehension, has brought a large body of peo¬ 
ple to unprofitable metaphysical speculation. 
They think if people could live on two hours 
of work a day, then that is all they should 
work, while it is infinitely better that people 
should receive less than they earn rather than 
be idle a large part of the time, because it is 
very probable that the idle time would be 
largely devoted to mischief and debauchery. 

What is the main object in life from a 
physical standpoint? Is it large estates? 
Suppose you philosophize. If you had the 
whole world presented to you, what would 
you do with it? It would be merely a sub¬ 
ject of contemplation. You couldn’t use it. 
There would be no satisfaction in it as to 
itself. You would begin to analyze—to de- 


92 


Meditations. 


duce reasonings; and you would ask your¬ 
self, “Is life worth living?” and from that 
standpoint the answer would be “No.” If 
you owned the world philosophically like the 
astronomer or geologist instead of by a deed, 
it would be different, and you would have no 
inclination to commit suicide for failure to 
grasp the logic of existence. Work is the 
principal object of physical existence. Most 
people consider work a means to accomplish 
an end. This is a partial misconception of 
life. The supposed object to the individual is 
wealth. Without that object the man would 
lose his desire to work. A man can be, and 
usually is, happy without wealth, but with¬ 
out work he is miserable. Wealth has its 
uses as a spur, without which the man lan¬ 
guishes into indifference. The savages of 
America did not have that spur. They were 
socialists. They owned the land in common. 
They were not what we call workers, al¬ 
though they worked at hunting. We have ad¬ 
vanced. Individually, wealth is a spur to ef¬ 
fort—to work, and that work conduces to 
real happiness. Any doctrine that advocates 
an unreasonable minimum of work is per¬ 
nicious and dangerous, because work is a 
condition precedent to strength, happiness 
and progression, and nobody who has a level 
headed grasp of the world and the people 
will ever walk the floor studiously anxiously 
seeking to provide a living for the people 
without a reasonable amount of work, be- 


Cowardice. 


93 


cause the effect of such a policy, if accom¬ 
plished, would be degeneracy, crime and 
misery. 


COWARDICE. 


Cowardice is a word that is loved and 
feared by most people. Men have set aside 
their reason and judgment and have done 
strange, daring and unreasonable things be¬ 
cause of the fear of being called a coward. 

And yet cowardice is merely a word, and 
comparable with the word caution. The one 
is used to express opprobrium, and the other 
to commend. The former is used to disgrace 
a person, frequently without a reasonable 
cause, while the latter is used to approve or 
to express doubt upon the reason, the judg¬ 
ment or the understanding. Aristotle tells 
us that cowardice is the dread of what will 
happen. Dread is produced by fear, and 
Burke says that early and provident fear is 
the mother of safety. This makes safety 
both in cowardice and caution, and as Con¬ 
fucius remarks that the cautious seldom err, 
it is better to be reasonably cautious than to 
be foolhardy, venturesome or reckless in or¬ 
der to show your bravery to the multitude 
and that you are no coward. This exhibition 
of a man’s bravery is merely a display of a 
misconceived idea concerning cowardice, 
bravery and caution. Burke, however, erred, 




94 


Meditations. 


because he should have used the words judg¬ 
ment or caution instead of the word fear. 

“Fools rush in where angels fear to 
tread,” to some people would imply that an¬ 
gels are cowardly, while to others, it 
would indicate a sound intelligent caution 
and nerve on the part of the angels. 
The saying calls them “fools,” while some 
would call them brave men. Every man has 
a different point of view, which is controlled 
by the understanding, and the ability to an¬ 
alyze, and by other circumstances. 

A man may be equal to an occasion to¬ 
day and unequal to it tomorrow; and that is 
not a question of cowardice as usually un¬ 
derstood, but a circumstance of the free and 
untrammeled workings of the human mind, 
producing a clear judgment through an ac¬ 
curate and comprehensive reasoning. The 
word coward is a stumbling block. Few peo¬ 
ple stop to analyze it. Its appearance will 
drive some men from reason, causing them to 
flee from themselves, producing a mental un¬ 
balance akin to insanity. One man, how¬ 
ever, is naturally more cautious than an¬ 
other, and that is not cowardice, but it is the 
constitutional make up of the man. He is 
cool, considerate and more happily endowed 
than the other, for some purposes at least, 
but the other man has his uses, for every man 
is supposed to have his place. But certain¬ 
ly the word “coward” used with opprobrium, 
though sometimes dangerous, carries no 


Cowardice. 


95 


philosophic weight to a balanced mind other 
than by analysis to demonstrate that the 
man who hurls it doesn’t know what he is 
talking about, and that he makes no distinc¬ 
tion between the words “cowardice,” “cau¬ 
tion,” and “understanding.” 

A brave man in battle may be known as a 
coward in a brawl; and a bully in a neigh¬ 
borhood may be known as a coward in battle. 
One day a man will fight, while another day 
under apparently like conditions, he will 
walk away. At times he will be quick to re¬ 
sent a fancied insult; at others he will parry 
and disarm the offender by a reasonable and 
good natured reply. A resentment of an in¬ 
sult may not be from intrinsic sentiment, but 
may be because of a fear that the onlookers 
may call the insulted one a coward. Fear 
compels him to fight and he is called brave; 
bravery causes him to walk away and he is 
called a coward: Thus a brave man is called 
a coward, and a man who lacks moral nerve 
is called brave. A fanatic courts ignominy, 
death or martyrdom because it means future 
glory to him. He is looking out for rewards. 
If he be a plain sensible man he will invite 
the sensible, the reasonable and the safe. He 
will think more of his present anatomy and 
the workings of his soundest judgment than 
he will of a chimerical condition based upon 
the ruination of the most perfect present. 
However, good nerve is to be commended, but 
it should ever be controlled by sound judg- 


96 


Meditations. 


ment and discretion, to prevent an unreason¬ 
able stubbornness or rash words and demon¬ 
strations. 

Courageous acts to the point of serious 
danger are usually the exhibitions of young 
men. When they get older they know better. 
When the reason or judgment develops, it 
seems to supplant bravado. What would be 
bravery for one man would be termed cow¬ 
ardice for another. And while splendid 
nerve in one case brings execration and un¬ 
popularity, in another it brings applause and 
honors; while in the former it should bring 
credit and honor, and in the latter disappro¬ 
bation and censure. 

Comprehension is the measuring stick be¬ 
tween cowardice and discretion, or between 
cowardice on the one hand and bravery and 
good judgment on the other. Our ancestral 
cave dwellers would have fought with a big 
stick at the least suspicion of insult or inva¬ 
sion. That was the logic of their conditions. 
But, at this age, uncompromising belliger¬ 
ency means the destruction of the invader. 

If a lion would call a man a liar he would 
take no offense at it. And if an inflammable 
ill-discretioned human, lacking in the finer 
ethics of human behaviour, occasioned from 
a vulgar animalism consequent from lack of 
sense, education or philosophical meditation, 
should call one a liar, ordinarily there is no 
particular reason why a broad minded man 
should stop and step aside to demonstrate 


Hollenbeck’s Philosophies. 97 

to the world that he is no coward by slap¬ 
ping the impertinent ignoramus, so long as 
the insult is confined to mere words. Nerve, 
dignity, forbearance and urbanity are good 
weapons in such a case. And a fearful, in¬ 
advisable retreat is not cowardice but a lack 
of mental balance for the time and occasion, 
or else a wise discretion that makes the re¬ 
treat advisable and in accordance with sound 
judgment. 


HOLLENBECK’S PHILOSOPHIES. 


1. Free thought and sincerity are not of¬ 
fenses, but virtues. 


2. Freedom is the unbiased, intelligent 
action of a healthy human mind. 


3. Democracy is the thought equilibrium 
between a despotism and anarchy. 


4. Common sense exemplifies simplicity, 
and treats other people with pleasant and 
agreeable consideration. 


5. All people have some common sense, 
but in some people it looks like a small oh 
ject a half mile away thro an inverted spy 








98 


Meditations. 


6. A big hearted man is a human barom¬ 
eter in touch with the congregated human 
heart. 


7. The world’s progress is made up of 
compromises. 


8. A man isn’t a criminal, nor a sinner, 
because the evidences that satisfy somebody 
else’s mind, do not satisfy his own mind. 


9. A mistaken man with intelligent and 
honest intent is seldom a serious menace to 
any community. 


10. An endeavor to make money by 
swindling is a self confession that the swin 
dler is not smart enough to make his living 
on the square, or else that he is a mental and 
moral degenerate. 


11. Credit is a powerful weapon for am¬ 
bition ; a solace and satisfaction in every day 
life; and a fortress of protection in distress. 


12. Opportunity is a condition that is in 
the man’s head, and the man is the creator 
of opportunities. 


13. A debt or bond is the weapon of de¬ 
sire, and is useful to the debtor only in ac¬ 
cordance with the soundness of his judg¬ 
ment. 









Hollenbeck’s Philosophies. 


99 


14. Desire to know the truth without 
fear of consequences, for to a free and ex¬ 
alted mind consequences are truths, and 
truth won’t hurt anything unless it ought to 
be hurt. 


15. Work is a demonstration of mental 
activity, and the mental activity compels rec¬ 
ognition. 


16. He who desires wealth to avoid work 
is inviting decay and death. 


17. He who despises a worker is empty 
headed. 


18. To do and to speak mean and vulgar 
things is the proof of meanness of thought. 


19. Integrity is that characteristic of a 
man that makes him immune from immoral 
and corrupting influences. 


20. When a man gives his word, that 
word should be a sacred goal to be accom¬ 
plished at all hazards within reason. 


21. You can kill a man, a community, or 
a nation, but you cannot kill an idea. 


22 You can corner the wheat market, 
the corn market or the hog market; but you 
cannot run a corner on thought. 










100 


Meditations. 


23. Envy is a boomerang and returns to 
wound and humiliate the man who cherishes 
it. 


24. Noise is a poor substitute for ideas. 


25. Imperfection is the field of oppor¬ 
tunity. 


26. In a worldly sense perfection is im¬ 
possible and undesirable, for perfection im¬ 
plies a want of higher ideals, with a conse¬ 
quence of stagnation and death. 


27. Be an all around sensible man. No¬ 
body can be more than that, and you cannot 
afford to be anything less. 






INDEX. 


Page. 

Suggestion . 7 

Young Man . 9 

Integrity . 11 

Ideas and a Free Press. 13 

Is Crime Increasing?. 15 

A Man’s Devil Is Envy. 18 

Vim in Editorials. 21 

Optimism . 23 

A Good Citizen. 24 

Socialism . 25 

Perfection Is Undesirable. 30 

Great Events. 33 

Slugging Contests . 36 

Don’t Try to Get Even. 38 

Fanaticism . 40 

Habits and False Notions. 43 

Bachelors and Maids. 45 

The Pursuit of Money. 47 

Spending Money. 49 

Individuality . 51 

Party Machines and Principle. 53 

Gambling . 56 

The Results of War. 58 

Weakness . 60 

Peace . 61 

Good Resolutions. 63 

Sense and Simplicity. 65 

The Snow Storm. 67 

Industry . 71 
































Page. 

A Free Mind. 73 

Democracy . 75 

Work . 79 

Bond and Free. 80 

Opportunity . 83 

Belief an Element of Long Life. .. 87 

Don’t Be Afraid of Work. 90 

Cowardice. 93 

Hollenbeck’s Philosophies .97-98-99-100 



















































































































































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